Why I Love Her

A Thousand And More

Lexa looks at the leather cover one more time proudly. A smile graces her features, wrinkles from many years of smiles and worries showing. The book is a representation of everything that she never knew how to do. The little fine details of life that she had missed as her job saving people had whisked her away for more than thirty years. From Lieutenant to youngest chief of the fire department ever, she had done it all.

It was early in the morning, the sun was barely up at 7am. Lexa had gotten too used to waking up early to sleep for long hours. She certainly wasn't going to sleep in on a special day like today.

Her head snaps up when she hears keys jangle against the front door lock, eyes as green and bright as the northern lights in anticipation. Then the door opens. The light of the heavens might as well have shone down in a spotlight on her goddess. There stood her wife, Clarke Griffin-Woods. Her blonde hair now shorter than it once was and now more of a platinum and grey, but she was beautiful all the same. Those same eyes that held the entire sky with them that had Lexa breathless from the first time saving that cat.

Yup, Lexa was definitely still whipped.

Clarke knows this, a smirk on her face despite her obvious exhaustion after her long shift. She hangs up her coat and saunters over in her heels, hips swaying in gently, making Lexa's heart do somersaults. Seating herself so that she's straddling Lexa, Clarke bends down to press a chaste kiss to Lexa's lips. If Lexa had been breathing before, she certainly was not breathing now. She would give up all the air in her lungs just to kiss Clarke a second longer.

Alas, Clarke pulls away, her soft pliable lips pulling out of reach for Lexa even as she tries to chase them.

She pouts a little.

Then Lexa asks, "So how was work?"

It was a daily question for them, but it never got old. No matter how many times Clarke answered the same thing, all Lexa wanted was to know a little more about Clarke.

"The same old things that the director does every day. I really have to retire",Clarke answers with a roll of her eyes.

Yet she still hasn't despite the fact that even Lexa has retired for a whole five years now. Leaving the hospital, the patients, and all those who have become doctors under her tutelage is something she can't quite find the heart to do. Lexa knows better than anyone that Clarke has the most beautiful heart of them all. She perks up as she sees Lexa still holding on to the leather bound book. "What's this?"

Despite having practiced a thousand times this morning in her head and aloud, Lexa's ears still flush in nervousness. "It's an anniversary gift."

Clarke raises a brow, holding out her hand for the book. "May I?"

Lexa relinquishes the book, watching her wife's face carefully for her reaction. Just in case Clarke didn't like her handmade gift she had also bought a gleaming swarovski necklace. So if Clarke hinted the slightest displeasure at the gift, she was ready to dash into their room and replace the book with the necklace.

The first few pages are just photos. Photos of the earliest months, before Lexa really knew they would last so long. They were photos of times with friends, of a New Year's kiss. The quiet moments, the loud moments, the happy moments. Then came the moment that Lexa realized she wanted to be with Clarke forever. That's when she'd really start scrapbooking.

Lexa knows exactly when Clarke gets to that point because Clarke flips the page and she gasps, reaching out so that her fingertips graze the thick parchment, now old and yellowed with age.

It was a scrap of canvas, not quite recognizably anything. It was barely a fifth of the original giant painting that was hanging on the wall, but both of them remembered the day quite fondly. It was Lexa's first time attempting to teach Clarke baseball, and Clarke had hit the ball with so much force it crashed straight through the window and into the painting, tearing an irreparable hole in it.