depth

xi

Their summer restarts. Weeks of stifling inconsequence are replaced by days brimming with elation – whether they do little, do much, or do nothing at all.

Their new chapter is the healing, the happening. Clarke rids herself of Finn, as much as she can: his presence, his belongings, and sweeps out any consideration of him from the corners of her mind. After she drove him home in his truck and chucked a packet of aspirin at him; after he came round, stiff and sore, to collect his stuff; after all of his attempts to nurse his wounded pride, he's more little more than an afterthought. Or, to be generous, a catalyst for her growth, in the way a garden looks infinitely better when the weeds have been dealt with.

He's spotted around Clarke's childhood home, though, if a guest looks hard enough. A few group photos – a group he's no longer welcome to – and the blackened space on the outdoor table are the only reminders left. But his clothes are gone; his cigarette packs have been thrown in the bin. The yellow of the house is the sun shining through open windows and through blinds, and there are no signs of tobacco stains now.

Without him, days vary in pace, each one memorable. The first few are epitomised by the healing, by the promises to stay overnight and handle each other with care. Clarke doesn't let Lexa go home until she's sat and had her wounds cleaned, although first aid sessions quickly turn into make out sessions instead. They call a rain check on the night out with friends, and Lexa cycles home to retrieve overnight clothes so they can spend the next two or three hours completely forgetting that the outside world still exists.

The days after the healing, then, come the happenings. Gatherings with their friends are more frequent. Wilder. Freer. Dressed up to dance – or, at least, look good watching others dance – the blonde knows it's been a long time coming: gazing lovingly at the mysterious enchantress under moonlight, laughing with Raven and Octavia about how blind she'd been and drunkenly challenging Lincoln to an arm wrestle. Drinking too much and sometimes not enough, waking up with memories of letting go to share as she cuddles up to Lexa under old bed sheets.

Days vary in pace, and sometimes the days they don't go out are the best days they have. Readings from college take up their afternoons, spent either laid out on the sun loungers or on Clarke's bed with legs entwined. If not academic books, then other things fill their time: favourite shared novels, horror movies Lexa comforts the blonde through, games and conversations and cementations of the bond they've shared since elementary school. Sometimes they'll have dinner with either girl's parents – an old tradition recycled with secret hand-holding under the table and light exclamations of, "Finally! We've been waiting for this for years!"

Clarke's art bursts into life in a way she's never experienced before. Emerald green entered her life long ago, but now it shines with purples, pinks and reds. New colours, new blends, new blurs; she finds herself drawing, doodling, sculpting on any surface she can find. Images fill her blood with a new lease of life.

(She paints a diver jumping into depths unknown. Not black, not white, not anything the diver could guess: flowers bloom on the tiled pool floor and, entranced, the person dives to smell the roses.)

As her art flourishes, Clarke and Lexa do, too. Synthesis is better when experienced, Clarke is glad to confirm: their sculpture is more breathtaking than even she could've predicted. The meshing of colours and tumbling of sounds out of open mouths – it's what they have been waiting for, depriving themselves of no longer. This invisible paint to accompany the visible colours Clarke has smoothed onto the brunette's back; Lexa's whispered sweet nothings to bring to life thoughts they had dared not think: they are the sculpture, and Clarke has never enjoyed art as wonderful as this.

Their summer passes, not as a necessary in-between, but as a celebration. Of themselves. Of their choices. Despite the heat of a world that refused to want them, they right the world through recognising themselves.

Clarke thinks on this as she lies with Lexa one evening. She hears their hearts beat to the sound of a summer pop song from playing from a phone somewhere: she recognises the singer, her ode to a sapphic type of love. Her heartbeat picks up when Lexa opens her eyes again; green alights on blue and the sight of it – even the sight of it – compels the blonde to smile.

"What are you thinking?" the brunette wonders, a hooded gaze soft as velvet. As if Lexa doesn't know.

In lieu of an answer, Clarke drapes a finger across her girlfriend's face. Her fingers touch where scrapes were: above the arch on an eyebrow, on the cut of a sharp cheekbone, the bow of a bottom lip. Ruby red patterns that have faded, but will always mean something to them.

But she speaks anyway.

"I was thinking – we held on," the blonde answers, finally. Quietly. Always enough.

To have taken that opportunity, and to have dived – that, Clarke knows, is what it means to hold on.