Chapter Text
Present day…
“That would be all for today, Lexa.” Luna informed her as she watched her phone, scrolling through the screen quickly and nimbly. “Remember to show up to training first thing Monday morning.”
Lexa nodded, looking absentmindedly at her phone as well, checking her messages and notifications that mentioned her recent press conference welcoming her to the Polis Natblidas, the soccer team she had just signed a contract with to begin playing professionally.
“I have to go now, but make sure you get out of here and go celebrate with your family. You worked so hard to get this, you deserve it.” Her manager assured her, flashing a smile drenched in pride.
Lexa felt a small lump form in her throat as she heard the pride in her voice. She nodded, returning the redhead's smile. “Thanks, I will.”
Luna nodded, giving her one last smile before walking out of the room, leaving her alone.
Lexa looked around, letting reality hit her. She had really made it. She had worked most of her life for the dream of playing soccer professionally and now that dream was finally coming true.
She let herself enjoy the feeling of triumph and satisfaction for a moment before she began to gather her things to leave the room, ready to head home to celebrate with her family and girlfriend.
“Lexa Woods, do you have a minute?” A voice behind her back startled her.
Lexa glanced briefly over her shoulder, finding a casually dressed man standing a few steps from the door.
“I'm sorry, the press conference is over and I have to go.” She apologized, turning to face him, ready to walk past him and out of the room.
“I think you'll want to make time to hear this...” The man assured, flashing a mischievous grin and stepping in her way.
Lexa frowned, a bad feeling beginning to creep over her.
“Who are you?” She asked, taking a more serious and less approachable stance to the strange man.
“Roan Azgeda.” The man introduced himself with false cordiality.
Lexa arched an eyebrow. “You're a journalist?”
Roan drew a sideways smile. “Sort of...”
Lexa nodded, letting out a sigh. “Listen, I really don't have time for this.” She said, pushing past him and making it to the door.
“It's about your child...” Roan spoke before she could fully leave the room. His words hit her with the force of a punch in the stomach.
“I don't have any child.” She assured quickly, turning to look at him with a frown, her gaze sharp as a razor.
Roan smiled slyly, shrugging his shoulders with infuriating calmness.
“The hospital records say just the opposite.”
Lexa tensed her jaw, her pulse quickening as she turned away from the door and walked with firm steps toward the man.
“Listen, I don't know what you're up to, but you're starting to piss me off.” She threatened, her voice coming out low, restrained, dangerously shaky under the anger and bewilderment.
Her mind struggled to comprehend. It was absurd. Impossible. She couldn't believe the audacity of that man, showing up on the most important day of her career and beginning to accuse her with outright lies.
But Roan didn't flinch at her threatening approach. Instead, he leaned his body a little closer to her, challenging her with his very presence.
“Oh, so you don't know Clarke Griffin?”
Lexa immediately froze at the sound of that name. The air left her lungs in a sharp blow.
She stood completely still. Her expression, once hard and defiant, crumbled completely. She felt a shiver run down her spine, leaving her skin bristling. Her throat closed and her mind went blank for a minute.
“Where did you get that name?” The question escaped her lips in a broken whisper, more vulnerable than she would have liked.
Roan smiled as he listened to her, knowing he had found what he was looking for, her weak spot.
“From the same place I got all my information from.”
Lexa felt her heart pounding inside her chest. Desperation seeped into her voice as she spoke again.
“What information?”
The silence that followed seemed to mock her, allowing her to hear clearly the chaos roaring in her head.
Five years.
Five years without hearing the name Clarke Griffin.
Five years since she had left it all behind. Lexa thought she had buried every feeling Clarke had made her experience when she decided to leave for college, every shared laugh, every kiss and every declaration of love. But it all came rushing back into her life in an instant at the mention of the one woman she had loved madly and who had also broken her heart in the blink of an eye without any contemplation.
Once again, Clarke Griffin had burst into her life, shaking her world completely.
Roan took his time before blurting out the truth.
“I have it on very good authority that six years ago you had a forbidden relationship with Clarke Griffin, daughter of one of the best surgeons in the country and a renowned engineer. I also know that she got pregnant and gave birth to your baby.”
Lexa looked at him stunned for a moment, wondering how he knew so much about her past relationship with Clarke.
Lexa cleared her throat. “Well, you might want to confirm your sources. Yes, I had a relationship with Clarke Griffin and yes, she got pregnant, but that baby wasn't mine.” Lexa assured, looking sternly at the man in front of her in a desperate attempt to hold on to the truth, her truth.
Roan drew another sly smile.
“Are you sure? Because the information I got from my source says just the opposite.”
The man reached into his pants pocket, pulling out his phone and scrolling across the screen. He placed the device right in front of her face, causing Lexa to throw her head back slightly in order to focus on the image in front of her.
Lexa's heart began to pound against her chest as she caught a glimpse of Clarke's figure in the photograph shown to her.
The blonde looked a little older than Lexa remembered her, but she was still just as beautiful. However, Lexa's mouth went completely dry and her stomach sank as she watched the blonde carry a little girl with green eyes and brown, almost dark hair in her arms. The photograph appeared to have been taken from a considerable distance, evidently unnoticed by the blonde.
Lexa forced herself to ignore her surprise at the image, replacing the feeling quickly with one of anger.
“What do you mean by this?” She asked in annoyance, roughly pushing the phone away from her face.
Roan licked his lips.
“This information seems to be very important, to the degree that it could be a major scandal to your just-started soccer career. And from your reaction I would venture to say that you didn't know anything about this either.” He explained, looking closely at Lexa's face in anticipation of a reaction.
“What do you want?” She finally asked, earning a huge satisfied smile from Roan.
“As I told you, this information seems to be worth an awful lot and I'm sure any entertainment media outlet would pay good money for it. But, I also figured you'd want to have it.”
“And I suppose all of this comes with an even higher price tag, right?” Lexa asked, reading the man's thoughts perfectly.
Roan nodded, looking pleased at how quickly Lexa had picked up on his intentions.
“Of course I did, I didn't plan this visit as a charity. This information is my job and my job comes at a price, and the fee increases considering whether you want to make this a public scandal or not.” Ronan threatened.
Lexa narrowed her eyes.
“You're blackmailing me?”
Roan smiled.
“I'm giving you a chance to decide about what to do with all this.” He clarified.
He held out a small piece of paper, which Lexa took and unfolded, finding a ridiculously huge amount of money plus a phone number written on it.
“That's my offer. Think about it and call me when you make your choice. But don't take too long.”
Roan walked past her like it was nothing, out the door.
Lexa stood in the middle of the room staring at the paper in her hands and trying to process what had just happened.
Without wasting much more time, she hurried out of her new soccer team's facility and headed for home. She desperately needed to talk to someone regarding what had just happened, so without wanting to wait much longer, she ended up scrolling through the list of her contacts on her phone until she found the one she was looking for.
“Hey, kiddo? How was the press conference?” Anya's voice came over her car speakers, causing Lexa to breathe normally again despite still feeling agitated.
“Hey, An. Everything was fine. Luna saw to it that everything went perfectly, except...”
“Except what?” Anya questioned, slightly alarmed by the small pause.
Lexa scratched her cheek nervously, letting out a sigh.
“After the conference I got a strange visit from a man.”
“Is that why you sound so disconnected? What did that man do?” Anya asked.
Lexa denied, though she knew her cousin couldn't see her.
“Actually, it's more because of what he told me than what he did.”
“And what did he tell you?” Anya demanded to know, beginning to lose her cool at how little information her little cousin was bestowing.
Lexa paused, hearing the man's voice in her head again.
“He claimed I have a daughter with Clarke, Clarke Griffin.”
Silence pervaded the line for a moment, causing Lexa to frown and check to make sure the call hadn't been cut off. The silence from her cousin at the news only made the brunette even more nervous.
After a few long seconds, Anya cleared her throat, speaking in a shaky voice. “How does he know abou-”
“About Clarke? I'm not sure. But he knows that we used to be together almost six years ago.” Lexa explained, beginning to suck on her lower lip nervously, a tic that had been present throughout her life.
Lexa took Anya's silence as an invitation to continue her explanation. “What really disturbs me is the photograph he showed me, An. The kid is the spitting image of me as a little girl.”
The ash blonde remained completely silent on the other end of the line, trying to process the fact that a person outside of herself or anyone close to her had revealed such sensitive information to Lexa without her knowledge.
Fear and anxiety soon began to creep over Anya as she tried to think of who could be the person responsible for that information possibly getting into the wrong hands. For years Anya had only wanted to keep that information hidden from Lexa to protect her and because she had promised to keep the secret, however, she began to get nervous as she watched all her work to keep Lexa safe begin to crumble in front of her eyes.
“But it must be a mistake, right? Clarke said the baby was Bellamy's. She would never lie to me, would she? If I have a daughter, Clarke would never take me away from her, she knows I'd never forgive her." Lexa continued to babble, sounding noticeably affected by the accusation.
Anya closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Why aren't you saying anything?” Lexa reproached her on the other end of the line.
“Lex...” Anya mumbled, feeling helpless at how affected Lexa was.
Then the brunette understood.
Just those words and the moment of silence that followed were enough for everything to click in Lexa's mind. She felt as if the ground opened up beneath her feet and the world seemed to unfocus around her. Her ears ringing with intensity.
“It's because you already knew about this...” Lexa muttered in a broken voice, feeling hurt.
“Lexa...” Anya tried to speak, but Lexa's voice wouldn't let her.
“No! Why the hell wouldn't you tell me?!” The brunette demanded to know, tightening her grip around the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white.
“Because you were nineteen and on your way to Stanford!" Anya defended herself, grabbing her car keys, ready to talk to Lexa face to face.
“And you kept it from me all these years?!” Lexa asked hurt, unable to believe it.
Anya let out a sigh.
“Clarke didn't want you to know either.”
Lexa clenched her jaw when she heard the name of the girl who had not only broken her heart but also lied to her.
Not wanting to hear any more, Lexa hung up the call, putting the gas pedal to the metal to get home. Once she arrived, she wasted no time and went to her room, taking a small suitcase and starting to put clothes in it without even stopping to look at what was in it.
In the midst of her hustle and bustle she heard the door of her apartment open, but she didn't take it seriously, continuing with what she was doing.
She heard footsteps approaching down the hallway from the living room to her bedroom. Costia appeared under her doorway just as she closed her suitcase.
“Lexa, where are you going?” Her girlfriend asked in confusion, watching her pick up her suitcase and walk over to her.
“You knew too?” Lexa demanded to know harshly once they were face to face.
Costia looked at her startled, not understanding what Lexa was referring to.
“What? What thing? What are you talking about?”
“That I have a child!" Lexa exploded, maintaining eye contact with the chestnut.
Costia blinked in a daze, her expression falling at her girlfriend's confession.
After a few seconds of silence, Lexa denied with exasperation, pushing Costia aside so she could leave the room and subsequently the apartment slamming the door.
Costia stood right where Lexa left her, processing her words.
It didn't take her long to understand what that was all about, after all, Lexa had only been with one other person besides her.
Costia felt her heart squeeze inside her chest as she weighed the possibility that it was true that Lexa really did have a child with Clarke.
The apartment door opened again, ushering in a visibly shaken Anya.
“Where is Lexa?” She demanded to know, stepping up to Costia as she scanned her surroundings.
Costia lifted her gaze slightly misty with unshed tears to meet the blonde's.
“She went looking for her.” She replied with a small tremor in her voice, reflective of the pain she was beginning to feel inside.