Disclaimer: Do not own Marvel, DC or The 100
Warnings for murder, violence, past rape, current rape, captivity, bloodshed and PTSD.
Did you really think you were the only monsters here?
Clarke Griffin normally didn't enjoy the pain of others. It was why she couldn't bear to hurt people. Even when they deserved it. Their screams were the worst. Seeing the light leave their eyes, while depressing, never caused her pain. But their screams? That was the worst.
Those screams of agony, of sheer pain…
So, it surprised her somewhat, hearing the words that had spilled out of her mouth, knowing that her mates had heard her.
Telling them how they had hurt her and comparing them to Cage Wallace, perhaps it was too much but compared with what they had done to her? She knew that was nothing.
And she couldn't help the smirk that crossed her face.
She might not have wanted to hurt them originally, but their hypocrisy, thinking that they got to be concerned over her after what they did? Made her feel like her newly found viciousness, was owed to them.
She put her book down and laid down along the bed, kicking her shoes off of her, curling up on the bed, not caring that she had the rest of her clothing on.
She just wanted to sleep right now.
She pressed her knees against her chest as she closed her eyes, her head resting against the pillow, strangely able to get to sleep soon after laying down.
She drifted off to sleep.
In the surveillance room, Clarke's mates watched her sleep, pained eyes watching her.
"So, any ideas?" Carol said, her voice usually dry or snarky, but now held a glumness that was very uncharacteristic of herself.
"I don't know, I don't know," Shayera said, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice.
For them, this was entirely new.
If an obstacle came into their path? All they had to do was order someone remove it, or shoot that obstacle themselves.
And if not? All they had to do was pay for someone to remove that obstacle.
This was entirely new to them.
Because this was a situation where there was total lack of control for them.
Lack of control in their emotions, in their actions, lack of control of what they could do for this woman who they all felt drawn to and could feel themselves wanting to be with more and more.
How did they move on from this?
Huffing in frustration, Yelena glared from Natasha to Melina as she asked, "You sure there's no one we can talk to figure out what to do?"
Natasha smiled wryly, the smile far from reaching her eyes. And she wasn't surprised to hear Melina chuckle.
That was what they did, when they ran out of options. Order someone else to do their job for them.
As all mob bosses did.
Still, there had to be something that they could do.
Natasha recalled there being a few therapists and psychologists, who they had access to.
Believe it or not, but a lot of mob bosses went to see therapists and psychologists for their problems. There would be a lot of mental breakdowns doing what they did, if they didn't.
Only the worst ones apparently, didn't "need" mental help.
And maybe they could help Clarke move past her trauma. Not just her trauma of what had been done to her by the man that had changed her into a vampire, Cage Wallace, but also help her with what Natasha and the others had done to her.
Natasha and the others, they all knew what they had done was horrible. And "horrible," was a nice way of putting it.
There was nothing they could do that would make what they had done to Clarke even remotely okay.
But they could try to help Clarke never be affected by the horror that was inflicted upon her, either by Cage Wallace, or by they themselves, her mates, the people who were supposed to protect her more than anyone would.
One way or another, they would have to figure out a way of helping her.
For the first few minutes, as Clarke slept in her prison, it was a peaceful sleep, despite where she was sleeping. But then her dream changed. At first, it was the usual serene, beautiful woods, where she had stayed in for years, before coming to St. Louis, then things changed.
The leaf and plant-covered pathway, was soon filled with bodies.
Men, women and children alike, all over the ground, their bodies dressed in pristine white and black suits, and glorious silk and satin, blue, red, gold, purple and yellow gowns and dresses, but each and every garment, as well as most of the patches of flesh, were spattered with bits of dark blood.
People that Clarke knew from more than two centuries ago; Maya, Finn, Abby and Jake Griffin-her parents, Maya's parents, Finn's parents, Jasper-Maya's fiancé and almost husband, Raven-Finn's fiancé, Marcus Kane-Clarke's own fiancé, other guests that had been there at Maya and Jasper's wedding, littered the ground, their throats torn right out, their necks with nothing but gory cavities.
Clarke wished she could feel bile in her throat, but no, she knew what she'd taste. And she did. She tasted her mouth, full of copper.
That same coppery taste, filled her mouth, but began to spill out of her maw, dripping down her jaw and throat.
Coppery liquid, that at one time, belonged to her now long dead loved ones.
Feeling hot tears begin to spill out of Clarke's eyes, when she heard Cage Wallace's voice in her head, "How does it feel to drain the blood of your loved ones? To be a monster like me?"
In the waking world, Clarke screamed, shooting up from her side, shaking, tears beginning to spill down her face.
In the surveillance room? Clarke's mates all watched the screen, watching as Clarke, who had used to be sleeping, snapped up, screaming, crying, body shaking.
The clear answer was that Clarke had had a nightmare.
Her body shook and Clarke's mates tried to ignore the pain they felt at the sight.
But as Clarke had revealed? They had hurt her enough.
So, how could they help her now?
Clarke raised her legs up from the bed and pressed her knees to her chest, hugging her legs and all eight Natasha, Diana, Melina, Mari, Wanda, Shayera, Niylah and Carol stared sadly, feeling pain in their chests.
What could they do?
Hela moved off of where she had leaned against the left-hand wall, and leaned down, looking at the screen where Clarke was seated on her bed.
She knew that there was no excuse for what they had done to her. But it didn't change that they couldn't just let her go, not if there was even a shred of a chance that she might run away and they might never see her again.
Hela inspected the button that would allow them to speak to Clarke through the speakers. No one was touching it.
So, Hela looked at the other women in the room as she asked, "Do we want to ask her what her nightmare was about?"
"Yes," Maria said, nodding, "You know we all want to. But after what she told us? Do we have the right to?"
Yelena growled, looking away from the screen where Clarke was, a rare expression of shame crossing her face, before she contorted her features to appear stoic again.
"We might not have the right to," Natasha said, her voice stern, her green eyes never leaving the screen where Clarke and the bed was, "But we might need to. If we want to help her."
Several of the others nodded.
But how did they ask? How did they know that they weren't the cause of this nightmare?
Had Clarke had a nightmare of them? Of them assaulting her repeatedly?
Had they caused Clarke's dreams to be nightmares?
Wanda was the one that made the decision.
She got up from her seat and whirled around and left the room.
Natasha and the others looked at her depart the room.
"Wanda," Natasha spoke up, but it was too late. Wanda had left and was heading down to where Clarke was being kept.
Sighing, each of the other women got up and followed after Wanda.
They reached the doorway of the prison where Clarke was being kept. There was a thick glass door, designed to be bulletproof, which could be activated and slid out and put in place of the steel door of the prison, which would be activated by a panel at their back.
When Wanda came to a stop at the door of the prison, and she turned to the square-shaped panel and pressed the large red button, causing the glass door to slid forward and the metal door to slide back, the glass door beginning to go into the metal door's place.
The metal door had moved back and the glass door was blocking Clarke from escaping, and Clarke's mates were looking into the prison at where Clarke was.
There were multiple holes in the glass door, small, but enough for Clarke to hear them and for them to hear her.
"Clarke," Dinah said, her voice raised, "Clarke, are you…alright?"
Clarke, to their surprise, didn't turn and glare at them and didn't shudder when she heard one of their voices.
She was already shaking, but her eyes were averted from them.
"Clarke?" Wanda asked, voice pained, "Clarke, please?"
Helena all but whispered, "My love?"
They knew that Clarke would hear the endearment.
Clarke finally, after several seconds that dragged on forever, slowly turned her head to face her mates, her blue eyes looking lost and sorrowful.
She stared at her mates.
Clarke looked at her mates, feeling their stares on her, even before she turned to look at them.
She would have laughed at them, were she feeling in any way better.
Alright? Was she alright?
What a joke.
She was so far from alright, it wasn't even close to being funny.
Even if they had never sexually assaulted her and never had kept her captive and even if they had never tortured people in front of her or abduct her in the first place? She knew that she would never be alright.
Not after what Cage…not after what she had done.
Seeing the pain all over Clarke's face, Natasha asked, "Clarke? Talk to us, love, please."
Clarke stared at her mates, at all of them, at Natasha, Wanda, Carol, Hela, Dinah, Helena, Maria, Brunnhilde, Shayera, Pepper, Mari, Diana, Shayera, Niylah, Sigrid, Beatriz, Tora, Yelena and Melina, and she actually laughed, a broken, weak laugh.
She still was angry at what they had done. But oh, shouldn't they know? Shouldn't they know what she was?
Her being a vampire clearly hadn't put them off, so, it was time for them to understand what sort of monster it was they had decided to keep here.
She grinned widely, suddenly, finding this whole thing almost disturbingly hilarious, as she felt the words come out, "You want to know what's wrong? Huh? Fine. I'll tell you what's wrong. I'll give you the full story of what happened when Cage Wallace attacked at Maya and Jasper's wedding."
August of 1819:
Two hundred and four years ago, in Boston, Massachusetts:
The brown-haired man with the cruelly handsome face, lunged out from under the tent with the guests, leaping across the ground, with speed that no one Clarke had ever witnessed before, and was suddenly in front of her.
Clarke gasped, stepping back, eyes wide, looking up at the man, a big, sharp-toothed grin on his face.
Next to her, Finn let loose an exhalation, before trying to jump in front of Clarke protectively, but this ended terribly for him.
The man with sharp teeth, raised his left hand and back-handed Finn, blood shooting out of Finn's broken lips as he was thrown back several feet into one of the elm trees on the property.
Clarke screamed, as Finn slammed into the tree, collapsing, the sounds of cracking hitting Clarke's ears and she knew that it was from the broken bones in her lover's body.
There were screams that adjoined Clarke's own screams, but the man whirled around his backhand hitting many, sending them down, disabling them, but Clarke realized somewhere in the back of her mind, each of the people that this man struck, still were alive.
Injured, but alive.
Then, after the man had injured everyone, except for Clarke, who would never be able to catch up with the man's speed, the man turned his attention fully to Clarke again.
"Hello, Clarke Griffin," he practically crooned, "I think it's time I give you your first true feast."
Clarke was too steeped in shock, fear and horror, to be able to respond or even to try to wrap her head around what he meant, her eyes jumping from where Finn lay by the elm tree, to where Maya was sprawled, unconscious, next to an equally unconscious Jasper and Father Sinclair, to where her parents, Jake and Abby, lay unconscious.
So, that was why she hadn't even seen the man move next, before he was on her, one of his hands gripping her throat, the other raising itself to his mouth, and he opened his mouth, fangs extended out and he lowered his head.
Clarke watched in growing horror and confusion, as he tore his own wrist open.
Clarke shook her head, not comprehending, as the man's veins were torn open and blood flowed down his right arm, but then he turned his head to her and lunged in, making her scream again as his teeth pierced her throat.
The Griffin house was located several hours away from most other estates or even humble cabins.
So, she knew that no one would hear the screams and the bedlam that had just happened here.
The man's fangs were in Clarke's neck, and she could feel her vision becoming blurry, as she could feel her blood being drained out.
Somewhere, amongst all the horror over seeing her loved ones being assaulted and the horror of being attacked herself, there was an additional horror, knowing what this thing was, that was biting into her throat.
Someone who had sharp fangs, and could move faster that she could see, and was now drinking her blood.
She had thought that they simply were things of myth, but…
As Clarke lost the ability to think, her mind too far gone and feeling the life begin to slip from her, she felt something press up against her mouth.
And she felt copper liquid enter her mouth, and after several moments of this, her vision went black.
Then her mind opened up again and so did her eyes.
But she knew one thing; she was. Hungry.
A growl left her mouth as she stood up, sniffing, everything; the world, the sights, the smells, the sounds, so, so much more potent than before.
A thrill ran through her and she growled, her fangs sticking out past her lips, when she smelled something absolutely delicious.
She needed it.
She was hungry.
She heard a chuckle next to her and she growled, glaring at the source of the sound. The man next to her, a creature like her, she sensed, older than her, and the one that had made her into what she was now, said, nodding to the direction of the delectable scents, "There, there's your meal. Many, many meals to feed on, fledgling."
Clarke groaned, smelling the intense scents.
So warm and tempting those smells were.
"Here's your first course, Clarke," the man said, leaning down and lifting up one of the creatures that the smell was coming from.
Clarke inhaled the scent of this creature. Male, young, had a good diet, strong.
Her eyebrows furrowed together in confusion, when she heard the creature begin to gasp out, pleading, "Clarke, listen to me, I know this isn't you. I don't know what this monster's done to you, but listen to me, we can stop this-"
But it didn't matter. The man that was Clarke's maker, turned to the boy and dug his fingers into the boy's throat, the source of that delicious scent she had smelled, flowing out of the boy's throat, and that was it.
Clarke let out another scream, but this time, it was more of a starving howl than anything else and she lunged for the young male's throat.
Her sire laughed, taking his hand away from the young male's throat and Clarke assaulted the young male's throat, drinking the dark flow of delicious liquid coming from his throat, drinking, the beast inside her beginning to be appeased.
She tore from the young male, after draining him dry, and then began to dispatch the rest where the delicious smell was coming from her, hunger not yet sated.
She tore out the throats of every creature she smelled there, save for her sire, and she drained them, hunger slowly beginning to be soothed.
But as her savage instincts and hunger controlled her, she might not have been able to stop herself, but she remembered what each creature she drained said, before she took their lives completely.
The words of the male who was still young, but older than the first young male she had killed, who she tore the throat out of, who was awake enough to speak, "My baby! Clarke, what has he done to you?!" would stay with her for centuries.
As would the words of the young female, just as young as the first young male she had fed from, whose throat she pierced, those words being, as the young female with dark eyes as soft and loving as dark silk, gleaming with their love, with long curls of black hair that glistened in the sunlight, placed her right hand against the left side of Clarke's face, trying to comfort her, regardless of what was being done to her, "It's okay, Clarke. I know…I know this isn't your fault. I love you. Finn and I both love you."
The words meant nothing to Clarke, when she was overtaken by her hunger and instincts, and she lunged deeper, her fangs biting into the female's throat, stealing the female's life force.
She drained the warm liquid from the female's neck, draining her.
Then after she felt no more inside the female, she went to the other creatures that she could smell and hear were still alive.
She would remember all their cries. Their pleas. Their begging.
And their screams. Oh, she would remember their screams.
She would always remember their screams. Their blood satiated her. The sight of their pain hadn't registered with her.
But she would always remember their screams.
When at last, every drop of blood had been drained from the humans in the vicinity, and she finally came back to her senses, Clarke's body became cold and her eyes, which only seconds ago, had gone from black to orange, to black again, were now the sky-blue ones that they had been when she first had been given birth to as a human, were huge now, as she took in the sight in front of her.
Dead.
Everyone was dead.
Every last person here at the wedding, was dead.
Corpses littered the green field, slumped over the tables under the tent, bits of blood splattered the almost entirely still pristine wedding cake.
Everyone dead.
Every single person except her and the man who had done this to her, dead.
Blood caked her mouth and teeth-teeth that were now as long and as sharp as knives, and she felt her tongue unconsciously slide out still and lick at the blood and the chunks of meat on her fangs.
Her heart which was still beating, regardless of what she was now, felt like it was shattering into pieces as she understood what had happened.
She had killed everyone, drained them of all their blood.
Her mother, her father, her darling Maya and darling Finn, Finn's parents, Maya's parents, Jasper, Father Sinclair, her fiancé who had just entered the grounds of the Griffin house, a half hour ago, that she had smelled walking across the lawn and had attacked him, Harper, everyone.
Everyone was dead, because of her.
Her sweet, loving and understanding father.
Her energetic and soft and gentle Finn.
Her selfless, brilliant and courageous Maya.
All of them, dead. Because of her. Their throats torn out, blood now sustaining her.
Maya and Finn's necks, which she had kissed, countless times, now gaping holes, where the ruined veins were exposed and pulled out and drained.
Tears streamed down Clarke's face, feeling cold.
"No…," she whispered brokenly.
Movement signaled the back of her and she tried to whirl around, but the hand was too fast, as it belonged to a vampire older than her, not to mention belonged to her sire, and the hand wrapped around her throat in a steel grip.
"Yes," a male voice sneered, and she gasped, feeling pain stretch through her neck at the tight grip around her throat, and her face was forced to look at who was holding her in an agonizingly hurtful grasp.
Cold, murderous eyes stared at her and a big grin filled with fangs met her eyes.
The man who had made her into this monster, leered at her and laughed, "You are coming with me now, girl. Now that I've killed everyone you hold dear? I'm all you have left. And you better not try to escape." He squeezed her throat tighter and dragged her across the yard, and Clarke tried to struggle, but she couldn't break his grip, feeling her throat being choked and feeling the pain slice through her heart.
She had murdered her parents, Maya and Finn. She had murdered everyone.
Two hundred and four years later
Present day, in St. Louis, Missouri:
Clarke stared through the glass panel between her and her mates as she sneered the words out, having finally revealed what exactly happened that day, before Cage had imprisoned her for years and had violated her repeatedly, "So, what do you all think? Still think I'm some sweet, adorable little vampire for you to mold into what you want?"
Clarke snickered at her mates, waiting for their reactions.
She had essentially told them everything.
About the near marriage of her beloved Maya with that young man, Jasper, Cage beating down everyone at the wedding to incapacitate them, Cage then turning her into a vampire violently, and then?
Her murdering literally everyone at the wedding, because she was a new vampire, and had no control and was starving for blood.
Clarke smiled morosely at the horror-stricken faces she saw across the room from her, at the tears that were beginning to slide down some of her mates' faces as they registered the entire story that she had just given them.
"So," she said, her smile becoming dark, as she took in how Wanda looked like she might start sobbing at any moment, or how Mari, Helena, Shayera, Yelena and Diana all looked like they were ready to put their fists through a wall, or how Hela's jaw was set in cold fury, or how Natasha was trying to keep her face composed, but Clarke even from where she was perched, could see the tears begin to flow from the redhead's eyes, "Did you really think you were the only monsters here?"