Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; if you're on this site, you know the drill. Also, thanks are owed to athingofvikings, who gave me a much-appreciated sounding-board for a few aspects of my planned world-building for this particular crossover; hope you like it.

Feedback: Appreciated as always.

AN: In advance, I had to shift the timeline for when the events of "The 100" actually occurred up a century or so to fit the new world I'll be creating here, but considering that the exact dates aren't that important in the original series (by which I mean we never see anything to state that events had to happen in 2149 specifically beyond it just giving us a useful frame of reference), I don't think it will make much difference, and the timeline of actual events is unchanged in terms of details such as how long the Ark was up in space before the 100 were sent down, I assure you.

AN 2: On the topic of timelines, for the characters of "The 100", this story starts shortly after the end of Season Two, and everything experienced by the residents of the Ark, the inhabitants of Mount Weather, and the Coalition are the same as in canon; Clarke hasn't yet made contact with Niylah or anyone else after she started out on her own, but from here onwards, things are going to be different for Clarke Griffin in particular…

The Dragon of Wanheda

"Tell me about the dragons, Daddy!"

"The dragons?" Daddy looked at Clarke with a warm smile at her question as he sat on the edge of her bed, six-year-old Clarke Griffin already snuggled into her blankets with eager eyes. "Are you sure? You've heard it before-"

"But it's dragons!" Clarke grinned at him. "The Nadders and the Zipplebackers and the Windstrikers and the Stormcutters and-"

"All right, all right," Daddy said, smiling indulgently at her as he reached into his pocket to pull out the faded but well-preserved pamphlet that he had kept there for as long as Clarke could remember.

"Before the bombs fell and the Twelve Stations of the Ark came together," Daddy said, looking at Clarke with that teasing smile she loved so much, "the most remarkable place on Earth was the incredible place known as The Dragon Sanctuary."

"The Dragon Sanctuary?" Clarke said, eyes wide as she repeated the words she'd spoken the first time she'd heard Daddy tell this story. "But dragons are stories, aren't they?"

"Yes and no," Daddy replied with a smile. "Dragons themselves never existed in nature, but a few decades before the War, a great man called Hamish Haddock became so fond of the tales of dragons that he couldn't bear to live in a world where they would never exist. He became a doctor-"

"Like Mommy?"

"Like Mommy, but different," Daddy smiled. "Hamish Haddock learned how he could take bits from other animals, and worked out how to put them all together to create something new. He was even able to work out how to give dragons their legendary ability to breathe fire by giving them new organs that created chemicals that would burn when the dragons wanted them to."

"And he made them loyal," Clarke said, smiling at the image in her mind. "People could train them and ride them and make friends with them-"

"Only in the Dragon Sanctuary, Clarke," Daddy corrected her, even as he smiled at her enthusiasm as he opened the pamphlet to show her the large map inside it. "On this isolated collection of islands in the north, everyone who could came to witness the wonders of the dragons, either enjoying the chance to explore the islands and see the dragons in nature, or taking part in brilliant quests to learn more about the world of dragons with their friends."

"And there were so many…" Clarke said, her fingers reaching out to almost touch the small pictures in the corner of the pamphlet as her father carefully turned its pages.

"Oh yes," Daddy replied with a smile, leaning over so that they could both study the pictures in the pamphlet, depicting some of the most remarkable dragons. "The two-headed Zipplebacks, the powerful Gronkles, the glowing Flightmares, the bellowing Thunderdrums, the sleek Windstrikers, the majestic Night Furies… Hamish created a vast range of dragons, and that's just what he released in publicity material; there were even rumours of great king-dragons that could command all others, but Hamish Haddock made all who visited the Sanctuary swear that they would never tell others to maintain the mystery."

"There were mysteries?"

"Oh yes; this wasn't just a big zoo where people could see the dragons in cages. Hamish Haddock created a whole world where humans could interact with dragons as though they had existed back in the days of the Vikings, experiencing the world when it was so much simpler than it had become. People could take the simple option of challenging dragons as they raided human villages, or join forces with the dragons to complete great quests for ancient relics of a lost past…"

"Did you ever go to the Sanc'ry, Daddy?"

"I would have loved to see it for myself, but I never had the chance," Daddy smiled sympathetically at Clarke. "But my own grandpa was planning to go to the Sanctuary with his family before the bombs fell; they had been making plans once he finished his tour of duty on what became Alpha Station, and he even had this pamphlet on board to plan for the trip."

"And you kept it?"

"Passed down from parent to child until now," Daddy smiled at her. "I've studied it and everything else I could find about the Dragon Sanctuary as much as I could."

"Why?"

"Because they were the most incredible thing we ever did," Daddy explained. "Don't get me wrong, I know that I have an important place here, and the mere existence of the Ark proves what we can accomplish if we try, but when I think about the dragons… if I had lived back then before the bombs fell, I would have wanted nothing more than to see the Sanctuary."

"Do you think they survived?" Clarke asked, sitting up in bed to look curiously at Daddy. "Back on Earth?"

"The dragons?" Daddy asked, putting the pamphlet aside to give her question serious thought, the wistful smile replaced by solemn contemplation. "It's hard to say, really; the Dragon Sanctuary was in a relatively remote part of Earth, so there would have been no obvious reason for anyone to target it when the missiles were fired…"

He sighed, and suddenly Daddy looked so much older than he had been when Clarke was six, and he stared at her with a greater weight behind his eyes.

"But on the other hand," he said, his tone reflecting a more solemn manner that he'd never have shown to Clarke at this age, "we're still not clear why the missiles were fired in the first place… maybe someone took care to target the dragons in particular…"

As Clarke watched, his skin seemed to tighten around his face before it began to bulge out all over his body, blood streaming from his nose and eyes as he looked at her.

"In the end," he said, now standing behind a glass door as Clarke stood on the other side of it, no longer a child but a nearly-grown teenager, "some dreams never come true, do they?"

Then his body spun over and backwards as the door behind him opened, and Clarke could only watch as Jake Griffin was sent flying out into space all over again, and all she could do was slam her hands against the glass door and scream…


"NO!" Clarke sat up sharply, looking anxiously around herself in that first moment of panic before she calmed down as she took in her environment. She was still getting used to sleeping rough and on her own since she walked away from Camp Jaha after the destruction of Mount Weather, and she'd spent several nights on minimal sleep as she tried to adjust to her new routine, but she'd eventually managed to get 'relaxed' enough to trust herself to wake up if something tried to attack her while she was asleep.

As Clarke tried to settle back down, she wished she knew why that dream kept troubling her. The ending moments as she relived her father's death were bad enough, but the memories it inspired after she woke up hurt just as much, remembering those innocent days when her father shared his childhood fascination with her, telling her all about the long-lost Dragon Sanctuary and the marvellous creatures that had lived here.

She wasn't even sure if it was more painful for her to realise as she woke up that everything she'd seen so far proved that the dragons her father had so loved to think about were dead, or the fact that he'd had the Dragon Sanctuary pamphlet in his pocket when he was floated, which meant that she had lost every physically written record that dragons had ever truly existed.

Even when she'd actually come to the ground, amid the chaos and urgency of their own need to survive, Clarke had done her best to try and find out if anyone else knew anything more about the Sanctuary, but her efforts had met with failure. Dragons might have once existed, but during her brief talks with the Triku, when she'd been able to talk to anyone about something that wasn't related to war, she'd asked a few tentative questions and had heard nothing to suggest that they even knew what dragons were, never mind any hints that they'd ever seen something that might match their description.

It was tragic, but in a grim way, Clarke supposed it was inevitable; if the dragons had been bred in captivity, even if they'd escaped the worst of the nuclear fallout, they had probably just died out after the surviving humans abandoned the park to come together somewhere else.

Once again, humanity screwed up a great gift, and now all I have is another dream reminding me of the many ways in which I let Dad down…