Hello! So here is the entire chapter. Enjoy! - LowTide1322
Damon walked side-by-side with Clarke. She kept at least two feet between them the entirety of the walk, and would only give vague answers to all of Damon's questions. Clarke still wasn't sure she could trust this man.
"It must be nice being reunited with your friends after a long time in quarantine." Damon said.
"You didn't save all of my people. There are more of us out there and you know it," she snapped.
Damon raised an eyebrow. That was the first straight answer Clarke had given all day, and she seemed surprised that she let one slip. Whom ever Clarke had left behind, they meant a lot to her. Damon could relate to that.
Damon stopped walking once they reached the end of a hallway. He whipped out an identification card and put it up to a scanner on the wall. The scanner flashed green and a metal door slid open, revealing what looked like a control room to Clarke. The few people in the room stopped their work and looked up at her and Damon.
"Mr. Salvatore, minors are not permitted—," a man began to say, but Damon cut him off by putting his hand on the man's shoulder.
"Why don't you take a break for a little bit? All of you. Forget we were here as soon as you leave this room." Damon stared at the man's eyes and proceeded to do so with the rest of the workers in the room. Clarke looked at Damon incredulously.
"They aren't just going to forget we were here because you told them to!" she said.
"Oh, you'd be surprised at how easily the human mind can be persuaded."
Clarke processed his comment for a moment. The way Damon said human made it seem like he wasn't one; like how old people would say, "darn kids these days".
As Clarke stood, frightened, the workers silently left the control room in a single-file line. The door closed behind them.
"What's the matter, Clarke?" Damon asked with mock-concern.
Clarke slowly began to back away towards the door. "Who—what the hell are you?" she squeaked.
"Relax! If I were going to hurt you, I would have already."
"What?" Clarke backed herself into the metal door and groped for a handle of some sort, but found nothing.
"Okay, okay, bad choice of words. Look, Clarke, I am here to help you—" Damon started.
"Let me go!"
"Clarke, listen to me—"
"If you're telling the truth, and you want to help me then you'll tell me what you are!" She protested.
Damon sighed. He shouldn't trust Clarke with this information. Hell, he'd only just met her a few hours previous. He wouldn't tell her he was a vampire; not until she helped him.
"Clarke, I know you want the truth, but I can't give it to you. I can't trust you with that information yet, but I can do something that can help you trust me." Damon fiddled with a bunch of controls, and all of a sudden, Clarke heard muffled voices coming through the monitor.
"These are your people from the Ark, Clarke. Mount Weather has been jamming their system."
Clarke shook her head. "You're lying. You wouldn't tell me that. You're the president's advisor!"
"I care more about what I want than what he wants. And right now, Clarke, you are the key to getting what I want."
"And what is it that you want?" Clarke found herself saying, suddenly intrigued.
Damon hesitated. He knew better than anyone not to reveal a master plan before it was enacted. But, he wanted to think that he could trust this girl. She obviously cared about her people, and Stefan was one of those people. Plus, she had a fire in her, and he knew that once she had a plan or an idea, she'd get it done. And that was exactly what Damon needed.
"My brother. I'm trying to get my brother back."
"And how can I help you do that? I don't know him."
"You do know him," said Damon. "Remember what my last name is?"
"Yeah, Salva—" Clarke stopped in her tracks. She knew who Damon's brother was now. In fact, she knew him all too well. He was one of the many loved ones she closed the dropship door on that night.
Damon searched closely for any recognition in Clarke's eyes at the mention of the name "Salvatore". What Damon saw didn't relieve him. There was utter terror and regret in her eyes, and it scared him. Was Stefan dead? What did she do?
Damon tried to keep his cool. "What happened to my brother, Clarke?"
"But that's-that's not possible. How-how could he have been on the Ark when you've been here. I don't understand—"
"Where is Stefan, Clarke?" Damon repeated, his voice dangerously low.
"You know the story. We had to make a ring of fire and kill all of the grounders. But Bellamy wasn't back yet so we waited, and Stefan," Clarke paused, reliving the awful night, "he ran out to go look for him, and he didn't come back. I assumed a grounder killed him, but now that I know he's like you, I'm guessing that wasn't the case."
"So you think Stefan died? Burnt to ash? I don't think so. My brother is stupid but he's not that stupid to come back to where the fire was going to happen."
"It's the only thing I can think of. He isn't here, and you've been watching the Ark camp, and my guess is he isn't there either," she paused. "He was my good friend, and I kept hoping that there was a way for him and my other friends to survive, but there is no way they could have. Jasper was right, no one but us in the mountain made it."
"You'd be surprised at how easily my family can avoid death. And if Stefan's still out there, then I'm sure the rest of your friends are too."
"There you are, Damon!"
Damon perked up at his name. Clarke hadn't called him by it the whole time they were talking, so he knew that it wasn't she who had said it. Damon looked at the door to see Elena and Caroline.
"How did you get in here?" Damon asked.
"Hey, if you're using compulsion now, so can we," replied Caroline as her eyes fell on Clarke. "Who's this?"
"Her name is—"
"My name is Clarke Griffin," Clarke cut Damon off.
"One of the kids from the Ark," Elena put two and two together. "So that's why you've been all over the place lately. You wanted to see if Stefan would be there when the president recovered the kids from the dropship. Why didn't you tell me you were looking for him?"
"Because…" Damon searched for a logical reason, but couldn't think of one on the spot. "I don't know, Elena, okay? I just never got around to it."
"Let us know when you come up with a real reason," said Caroline.
Damon rolled his eyes as Clarke piped up. "I'm sorry, who are you?"
"My name is Elena Gilbert and this is Caroline Forbes."
Clarke raised an eyebrow. "And I'm guessing that you are the same thing he is," she gestured to Damon.
"Why am I not surprised, Damon? In less than, what, five hours you've already made her disgusted by you," Caroline taunted him.
"Shut up, blondie."
"Mount Weather? There's nothing in there; only supplies," Bellamy said.
"Maybe not. There could be people that live there. Remember when Lincoln said that 'the mountain men will kill us all'? Where else could the 'mountain men' come from?" said Finn.
"You're right. The mountain men come from Mount Weather, and they took our friends. We need to keep moving if we want to get there before nightfall," Stefan interrupted.
"Wait, you said you have a brother in there? That's not possible because you can't be older than..." Finn trailed off. Maybe Stefan wasn't—
"Seventeen? Technically I've been seventeen since 1864; my brother has been in his twenties since 1864."
Finn and Bellamy stood in silence. That was more than four-hundred years ago! There was no way that any one or thing could live that long.
"You still haven't told us; what are you? You can't be human because nothing human could live that long," Bellamy said, finally.
"I was human, once. It seems so long ago, now," Stefan said partially to himself. "I'm not human now, no. I'm a vampire."
"I've heard of that," Finn exclaimed. "Supernatural beings that feed on—" he paused, suddenly fearful of the "boy" beside him, "— that feed on human blood."
Finn and Bellamy took a step back.
Stefan felt like laughing. "If I were going to kill you, I would have done it already, trust me."
"And that's supposed to make us feel better?" Bellamy spat.
"Think of it this way: you have a nearly five-hundred year-old being protecting you from 'grounders' and 'mountain men'," Stefan smiled with mock-reassurance and patted Bellamy on the shoulder. "Come on, we really need to keep moving," he began walking in the direction they were going in before when a gun appeared out of nowhere and was pointed at his heart.
"Councilman Kane?"
"I don't know who you think this, this creature is but—" Kane began, pressing his rifle against Stefan.
"No, you don't understand, he helped us escape from the grounders," Finn said as he got in Kane's face. "We know what he is and he means no harm."
Bellamy was confused. Why wasn't Stefan doing anything? He was obviously stronger than Kane, and could kill all of the other guards. If it were Bellamy, everyone would be dead in an instant just for insulting him.
"Lower the damn gun. He knows where the rest of our people are and if you kill him, we'll never find Clarke and everyone else," Bellamy said finally.
"He has been locked up on the Ark in a cell for decades…in fact, he's been in the Skybox ever since our people began to settle up there! He is a threat to humanity, and if you're on his side, you're against ours."
Before they knew it, Finn and Bellamy found themselves handcuffed and were being led to the Ark camp along with Stefan.
"Why didn't you do anything?" Bellamy whispered to Stefan.
"These people are scared," Stefan shook his head, "they're just trying to protect themselves. Believe it or not, I'm not a killer as everyone seems to think."
After about twenty minutes, the small party reached the Ark camp. Finn and Bellamy were amazed at how many of their people back home had survived. It was a blessing, but also a curse. Bellamy realized that he wasn't in charge anymore. They'd have to live by the same rules before that they tried so hard to break while on the ground. What made it worse was seeing Abby Griffin; she just looked too much like Clarke for the boys to bear.
Abby reached out a hand to examine the boys' injuries, whilst giving a wary look at Stefan. Kane stepped in front of her.
"Kane, they're just kids. Even if you call them 'prisoners', they still need medical attention. As for him," she nodded her head towards Stefan, "you can take him away. He'll heal on his own."
Stefan avoided Abby's eyes as he was lead past her. He knew he broke their promise, but he hadn't meant to! How was he supposed to know that his brother would try and find him by capturing the rest of the 100?
Stefan sat alone in his make-shift cell, which was really just someone's old bedroom. Stefan had never really been anywhere on the Ark. Originally, Stefan hadn't planned on going to the Ark at all. But, just when he was trying to get into Mount Weather, someone shot him with wooden bullets and then injected him with vervain. Then, to his great surprise, he woke up in a prison cell in outer space.
Stefan assumed it was Damon's final revenge on him for what he'd done to him. And for a few decades, Stefan accepted the punishment. He knew he'd hurt Damon, badly, and he shouldn't have done what he did. But after being desiccated for sixty years, Stefan became angry and vengeful. He got over the feud he and Damon had had, and realized how wrong it was of Damon to put him up here, locked away and on the brink of insanity. Yes, Stefan would think to himself, eternity of misery indeed.
Eventually, after ninety-three years of being, well, a corpse, a woman opened his cell door and gave him a shot of blood. She told him that she would let him go down to earth with ninety-nine other juvenile delinquents if he would just protect her daughter. He said he'd do it, and prepared to go back to earth; to get back at his brother. Not to kill him, of course not, but to make him feel the pain that Stefan had gone through.
Abby storming in the room broke him from his thoughts.
"We had a deal!"
"I kept my promise, I—"
"Your freedom, in exchange to protect Clarke!"
"I tried, okay? I assume Finn and Bellamy told you what happened exactly. When Bellamy didn't come back, she wanted me to find him. I couldn't, so when I came back, she closed the door on me and everyone else who wasn't already inside. So, I left again. When I returned, the camp was turned to ash, and the kids were taken away by Mount Weather soldiers—"
"Why didn't you stop them?"
"I can't kill an entire squad of armed men on my own! Who do you think I am, Klaus Mikaelson?"
Abby opened her mouth to give a comeback, but closed it. "Who?"
"Never mind. The point is, I was trying to get the kids back, to get Clarke back, but your new chancellor stopped us and brought us here."
"How were you going to storm the mountain armed with two juvenile delinquents and a stick?"
Stefan was going tell her about Damon, but decided against it. It'd be best not to reveal all his secrets; at least, not yet.
"I know a way into the mountain. If you just let me lead a few men—"
"No. You're going to tell me how to get in, and then you're going to stay here until I figure out what to do with you," Abby said, turning on her heel and headed to the exit. Stefan's words stopped her.
"There are people in that mountain that I care about, and I have to get them out. Including Clarke. I care about her too, and I need you to let me come with you. Please, Abby."
Abby turned back around to look at Stefan. He looked like a kid; barely any older than Clarke. She couldn't help but feel sorry for him. She didn't know how long he was suffering on the Ark or before the Ark, and right now, looking at his young yet ancient face, she wondered if he had deserved it.
Abby shook her head, dismissing the thought. As she began to walk away, she realized something.
"Why haven't you compelled me to let you go?"
"Because I don't live like other vampires do. I try to be as human as possible; honest, kind. If you're ever going to trust me, Abby Griffin, you should trust me because you choose to, not because I forced you to."
Abby processed this for a moment. There were so many reasons to trust Stefan, yet so many not to. She knew the choice she had to make.
"Humans are none of those things," she said as she exited, leaving Stefan behind.