Original Summary: Lexa and Clarke have been together for roughly two and a half years now. Clarke's art is becoming a bigger asset and Lexa is nearly halfway through her undergrad years to become a psychologist. Things have been all good between them, but suddenly their pasts are bubbling up even as the future soars down at them. They must learn how to combat the struggles of their past coming back to them, while simultaneously trying to decide on whether or not to take a major step into the future. Relationships will strain and tears will be shed. The question is, will they ultimately recover from everything that comes at them?

A/N: Hello lovelies, I'm a bit late to posting this one here, but I will do my best of course to post consistent 2 chapters a day updates :) The complete sequel to Pristine is up on Ao3, and the third story is now in progress there as well. :) Thanks for sticking with this story if you're back for this. I love you all, and I'll see you in the final note. xxTori

"All of my professors hate me," Lexa whined to herself as she tried to get her homework to load on her computer. It was probably sad how much she missed homework one paper. Her laptop never seemed to want to cooperate with her, and she was pretty sure that all of her professors were conspiring against her in a huge plot to convince her that four year degrees were bullshit anyway. Watching the little loading circle twirl around for two minutes straight was enough for her, and she slammed her laptop shut a little harder than she probably should've, hissing out, "Fuck this," as she did.

"Whoa there," a voice said in response, as the front door of the apartment closed and Lexa jumped, surprised.

"My professors hate me," Lexa announced, climbing up off of the bed and going to the bedroom door, leaning against the edge of the doorway as her girlfriend came into the apartment. "They're conspiring against me to make me quit school."

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, I'm sure that's what's happening."

"It's been two days since break ended, and I have so much homework. And it won't load on my computer," Lexa whined, pouting at the blonde. "How was work?"

"Boring," Clarke answered, going straight into the kitchen to grab something to drink. "You just been yelling at your computer since you got home?"

Lexa felt a smile tug at her lips. She liked hearing it more and more every time Clarke said it – home. Moving in with Clarke was easily the most stress relieving thing she'd done since starting college. Her scholarship to Polis University had required that she live on campus for a year and a half, or she else probably would've moved in with Clarke earlier, but after suffering a whole three semesters with the worst roommate that she could've ended up with, this was a huge upgrade.

It didn't help, either, that her two best friends, Anya and Luna, had been somehow lucky enough to end up rooming together while she suffered with the most intolerable nineteen year old Lexa had ever met.

"Mostly," Lexa answered, nodding and seating herself on the little table that was in the middle of their apartment. It hadn't changed much in the week and a half that Lexa had lived here with Clarke, the living area was still without a couch or a TV. However, next to Clarke's desk that was in there instead was Lexa's desk, moved from her dorm for the sake of her having a place to do homework. Though, she much preferred doing it while in bed. "Are you going to paint today?"

"I'm too tired," Clarke admitted, grabbing two beers from the fridge and moving to offer one to the brunette, who took it gratefully. "But I don't have work tomorrow, so I'll do some painting then. Your homework isn't due this week, is it?"

Lexa shook her head. "No, but I wanted to get it over with. My mom wanted to go out to get lunch with me on Saturday, and I thought that maybe you and I could go out on Saturday night."

Clarke grinned. "That sounds like something that I'm definitely not opposed to. Are you going to be taking me out?"

"Why should I? You're the one getting bribes from your mom," Lexa teased, sipping her beer.

Clarke groaned, taking a long drink of her own drink before stepping closer to where Lexa was seated on the table. "That's not funny," Clarke muttered, frowning. "She's seriously getting on my nerves with these emails she keeps sending me. I have half a mind to delete that email anyway, it was the one I always used for school stuff."

"Which you clearly don't need anymore."

"Exactly," Clarke agreed, nodding. "But if I do, she'll probably just start spamming my phone, and that's not much better."

Lexa tilted her head. "Why not just tell her that you're looking for another job besides art, and then just tell her in a few months that your job hunt failed?"

"She wouldn't believe me. And if she did, she'd just offer me a job in DC," Clarke answered, smiling sadly. "I really should just tell her to stop sending me money. It's starting to stress me out."

Lexa frowned, setting her beer down and reaching out to grab Clarke's waist, pulling her closer. "I'll take you out on Saturday and we can think about not your mom and her money."

"That sounds awesome," Clarke said, smiling widely and pressing a kiss to Lexa's lips.

Fifteen minutes later, Lexa had finally forced herself to try and do homework again, opening up her computer and sprawling back across the bed. Clarke had gotten a phone call from Bellamy, and she could hear her girlfriend talking in the other room. On one hand, it wasn't so different living with Clarke as it used to be when she just came over all the time. She probably spent more time at Clarke's apartment than at her own dorm during the three semesters that she was in the dorms.

As she reloaded the screen that she'd closed her laptop on, she realized that she had to lo in to the site again, and she tried not to get too impatient already. As she saw the loading screen pop up again, she grabbed her phone, realizing that she had a text from her mom. She'd sent one earlier, asking if Clarke could come to lunch with them on Saturday.

From Mom – That's up to you, sweetie. I have something that I want to talk to you about.

To Mom – What is it?

From Mom – Let's talk on Saturday. :)

Lexa huffed, tossing her phone aside in annoyance. She hated going into situations completely blind. In some circumstances, situations like that could turn out to be exciting, but in others they could be just awful. She didn't like leaving it entirely up to chance.

Glancing back up at her computer screen, her face lit up at the fact that the homework site had loaded, and her assignments were listed in front of her. None of them were due this week, and some weren't even due the following week, but Lexa wanted to knock out as much of it as she could.

She worked on it for as long as she could manage, but when Clarke came back into the room and announced that she was going to take a shower, Lexa couldn't bring herself to do anymore. She logged out and powered off her laptop once Clarke had disappeared into the bathroom, and then quickly stripped off her clothes. Once she was naked, she went to the bathroom door and opened it. She and Clarke had long since stopped locking the door when one of them went into the bathroom.

It almost felt like forever that they'd been together, even though it had only just been about two and a half years. Lexa had never been so comfortable with anyone else, though that wasn't surprising, considering how small her circle of friends and family had been before meeting Clarke. Since then, Clarke's friends had become hers, and visa versa, and it was almost like they were her family as well. It was nice to have that.

The shower curtain was drawn in front of the shower bath, and the shower head was running, but Lexa was almost sure that Clarke had heard her come in. Lexa glanced at herself in the mirror, and then stepped over to the shower, pushing back the curtain. Clarke glanced over her shoulder at the brunette, looking unsurprised as she slipped in. "Thought you were doing homework?"

"Yeah well, that's boring," Lexa claimed, smiling softly and pressing her body against Clarke's. "And I didn't get to see you all day because of class. I miss break already."

"Me too," Clarke agreed, frowning, "and it wasn't even my break."

"Ugh, I'm kind of glad that we've never both been in college at the same time. I feel like we never would've had time for each other."

Clarke hummed in agreement, nodding and turning around now, her hands falling to Lexa's hips and pulling their bodies flush with each other. "College takes up a lot of time, but I enjoy this time we do have together."

Lexa batted her eyelashes at the blonde. "So do I."

Clarke's music was blaring loudly as she touched up the piece that she'd been working on for the past week. It was nearly done, which was lucky for her, because it was a commission. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could get paid for it. Her income was actually fairly steady, even excluding the fact that she still worked part time at The Bean. She had gathered quite a following on her etsy account, and there were very few paintings or drawings that she would create that someone didn't want to buy.

The most surprising, and pleasing, part of of the whole thing was that art had never failed to make her happy. Even after having to treat it more and more like a job rather than just a hobby, there was nothing like standing in front of an easel and creating artwork.

It was something that her parents could never really understand, which, prior to a few months ago, definitely never bothered Clarke. Aside from accepting the money that Abby Griffin had given her to pay for college, Clarke had had no interaction with either of her parents since starting school. That was nearly four years ago now, and all that had changed was that as soon as she graduated with her associate's degree, the college payments stopped coming through from her mom.

Clarke had been content to no longer think of her parents for any reason, and frankly, she had begun to see Lexa's mom as more of a mom to her than hers had been in over six years. Unfortunately, the past always seems to have a way to creep back up on a person, and just as Clarke was starting to talk to Lexa about the brunette moving in with her come winter break, the emails had started.

Emails from her mom, yes, but also alerts telling her that her mother had begun a weekly transaction to her. It was a couple hundred dollars every month that Clarke had at first assumed was an accident, but upon reading the emails her mom had sent her, she realized that the woman was hoping that with the money, Clarke would take time off of art to find herself a "real job".

As if.

"Hey, Clarke?" a voice said, pulling Clarke's attention away from her easel. She turned around, realizing that her door had been slid open and Octavia was standing on the threshold. Clarke quickly set down her brush, moving over to her computer to pause her music.

"What's up?"

"I was gonna ask if you could turn that down a little," Octavia admitted, "oh, but also, I want to run an idea by you." Clarke raised an eyebrow, nodding to her friend, who came into the room all the way and leaned now against the paint splattered table that took up the space in the room that wasn't occupied by art supplies and paintings.

The warehouse had changed very little during the two and a half years that she and her friends had owned it. Octavia's room had changed the most. With her addition of two bookshelves and a second couch, it had become much more cramped and cozy in a way. Aside from that, every room was pretty much the same. Finn had installed lights in the few rooms that hadn't had any, because winter always brought on nighttime earlier, and windows were useless at that point. It was probably worth a lot more than what they paid for originally by now, but it felt so much more like home than it once did.

"Okay so," Octavia was starting, "I was thinking about how I'm getting my master's degree at the end of this semester, right? So, the fancy part of town has that new office building, and apparently there's a chance that some journalism opportunity is supposed to magically appear within it sometime soon."

"Yeah, I heard about that from someone at work," Clarke said, nodding along and not really understanding what Octavia's apparent idea was.

"So, I was talking to one of my professors, and she was saying that she's not sure that I should try for it," Octavia continued, and Clarke furrowed her eyebrows.

"Wait, what? But aren't you the best student in like all of your journalism classes?"

Octavia rolled her eyes. "Just wait for the point, Clarke. She said that whatever business is going to open there isn't going to be good enough forme. She told me that she thinks I should consider leaving the state, and going somewhere more... you know, relevant."

Clarke was taken aback, and she stared blankly at Octavia for a moment. "Wait, you're leaving Polis?"

"I'm not sure yet," Octavia admitted, shrugging. "It was just a thought. New York City, I mean, that was the specific thought. If the place that opens with journalism opportunities isn't so great, then I'm screwed otherwise. So what do you think?"

"I think that it would make sense for you to go," Clarke said slowly, "but you'd be so far away from everyone."

"Five hours isn't that far," Octavia reasoned. "There's nothing very great about Virginia anyway. Plus, I was thinking... ah, I don't know, maybe we could all move? I mentioned it to Raven, and she said that it might be possible for her to transfer to NYU. None of us really have anything holding us here except for school. New York would be an amazing opportunity for all of us."

Clarke narrowed her eyes. "Okay, so you forgot that I'm dating someone who's not even halfway through her first degree?"

"It would be even easier for her to transfer than Raven," Octavia said quickly, "and of course I didn't forget about Lexa. She only just declared her major as psychology anyway. And she could easily get into NYU as a transfer, your girlfriend is brilliant."

"I've never even had interest in moving to New York, Octavia," Clarke said, shaking her head. "I don't think I should even consider it until Lexa's graduated."

Octavia shrugged. "Whatever you say. Raven and I were seriously considering it, though. I haven't really brought it up to anyone else. For all we know, I guess the plan could just fall apart. Or that office building could turn out to be full of the best companies ever or something. I guess we'll see. It was just an idea."

Clarke nodded.

"Well, I'll leave you to it, then. Gotta start a paper," Octavia said, stepping back toward the door. "I'll see you later!" She disappeared, and the door slid shut.

Clarke started her music again, turning down the volume as per Octavia's request. As she moved back over to her easel, she tried not to think about Octavia's idea. The idea of one of her best friends moving to New York was scary enough, but the thought that all of her friends might be moving there? The thought that she could possibly move there... that was a lot more intimidating.

Luckily, music and art took over her senses before she could get too deep in the thought, and her friends and New York City became just another passing thought.