Disclaimer: Do not own Marvel, DC or The 100
Potential warnings for murder involving forced drug overdose and arson, and other murders, and stalking, and child abuse; a child being locked in her room and left alone and mistreated.
Her dreams
Clarke's childhood was, from what she remembered, sort of weird.
She had weird dreams sometimes about flashbacks when she was a kid. But she could never really pinpoint what was going on in those dreams. For starters? The dreams couldn't actually have been memories, right?
At least, she hoped that wasn't the case. Because…..that was kind of weird, you know?
Currently, Clarke lived with her adoptive family, the Bartons. She was very happy to be here. It took her a long time to get used to Clint and Laura Barton; parents that actually cared about her and didn't think of her as a burden, the way her biological mother, Abby saw her.
And it took her a while to get used to the fact that she now had multiple siblings.
Her other two fellow adoptees; Wells Jaha and Lydia Martin. And Clint and Laura's biological children; Jillian, Cooper, Lila, Zachary and Jessie.
Clarke now was nearly fifteen years old.
The Barton home was as close as Clarke had experienced to an actual home. That house where she had lived with Abby Griffin? Hadn't been a home. It had been a prison.
And Abby had made sure that Clarke experienced that house as a prison the entire time Clarke had lived there.
It was an absolutely terrible thing to think, but Clarke honestly was grateful that Abby was dead.
It was all that wretched woman deserved.
Don't get her wrong, she didn't think murderers should get away with killing people, and she hoped whoever killed Abby and Kane, got caught, but she almost felt like whenever it came out who it was that murdered her mother and Kane, and the person was sent to prison, that maybe she should send the person flowers and a 'thank you' note.
Again, Clarke knew these thoughts were absolutely terrible. But that was how she felt.
She hoped the person was caught, but only if the person had killed other people besides her mother and Kane.
Actual innocent people.
Clarke tried not to let her mind wander to the other deaths…the ones that involved the other orphans.
Murphy. Not to mention Jasper, Miller and Monty.
Three of those boys had made her life a hell at that orphanage. Not to mention, Murphy had threatened to kill Wells multiple times.
Then he had ended up dead. Of a drug overdose.
Really strange, cause last time Clarke checked? Murphy was a lot of things. But he wasn't an addict.
Then there were Jasper, Miller and Monty.
They died in a fire at the house where they had been adopted into. The parents that had adopted the three boys, hadn't been home. And the house had been locked up from the outside, so that the boys couldn't get out.
Monty hadn't done anything to hurt Clarke.
But he hadn't done anything to stop the torment, either.
Clarke tried not to think too hard about what that all meant. There were a few explanations. She was sure.
Murphy might have been an addict, she might just not have seen him do anything with drugs that she could remember.
And for all she knew? Maybe Jasper and Miller had set the house on fire themselves by accident and got trapped inside.
The two of them, as she remembered, were morons, as well as assholes.
Which meant that this could all be a coincidence.
Still, sitting there on the Bartons' front porch, looking out at the landscape in front of her, from where she sat, hearing the TV from inside and hearing the younger kids laughing at the cartoons on the screen, she had to wonder.
All of this…..somehow felt intentional. Like more than just really good luck.
Some part of her, and she wasn't sure she could explain this part, but some part of her, felt like it was connected to her childhood. And yeah, she knew that wasn't even remotely logical.
There were those strange memories she had. Dreams from when she'd been younger.
Starting from when she had been young. Very young. Eight or something. She didn't remember the exact age.
But whenever Abby had let Clarke outside of the house? Clarke remembered seeing things around the house.
Things she couldn't really explain.
She remembered one time when she'd been playing outside in the backyard of her house, playing by herself, since Abby didn't like Clarke having friends, and when Clarke had been trying to skip stones along the nearby pond, and failing with absolutely horrible fashion, she heard something move around above her.
It had sounded like claws against wooden tiles.
Clarke had whirled around and had looked up.
On the roof of her mother's house, Clarke saw a finger, dressed in dark clothing, moving quickly off of the top of the house.
Clarke had stared, frowning.
Young as she was, she knew that a figure shouldn't be up on the roof. Her mother had never liked Clarke entertaining the thoughts of things that might make her happy. Which was why Abby was more than happy to burst Clarke's bubble about Santa Clause.
Clarke had known that Santa wasn't real, since she was four.
Besides, it wasn't even August yet.
Even if Santa somehow was real, what the hell was he doing on the roof of her house, in July?
Besides, the figure had been dressed in black.
Needless to say, everything about this situation, had made Clarke suspicious, young as she was.
She went around the house, looking up at the roof, never taking her eyes off of the roof, trying to see if the figure had lingered.
But she saw no one.
She was relieved, yes. But nervous. And confused.
When she had told Abby about it, Abby had practically spat at her and told her to stop making things up for attention.
Clarke wasn't surprised. Typical Abby response.
Still, Clarke knew what she had seen.
And there were other instances that stuck out to her.
She would be near the woods when her mother was busy, trying to play with some frogs in the pond. She'd never hurt an animal, she just wanted to play with them. And while she was trying to pick the fleeing and hopping away creatures, Clarke would hear, or swear that she heard chuckles around her, from behind trees, from above her in the branches, everywhere.
And she swore she thought she saw several dark figures move past her almost impossibly fast, between the trees.
Clarke whirled around, searched the trees, saw nothing.
She then thought she heard movement above her and she looked up.
Nothing. There was nothing in the branches.
Clarke assumed she was imagining it. But still….some part of her doubted it.
Then there was that dream she'd had years and years ago, when she woke up while sleeping, and saw a group of faces outside of her barred window.
The bedroom that she had, was small and her mother always made sure there were bars on her window.
And that night? Clarke had been sure she'd seen faces outside of that barred window, looking in on her.
She couldn't remember what those faces looked like. But she thought she saw several faces looking at her, watching her as she lay there under the covers in her bed.
But then, how could that dream have been real? Yes, Abby's house had been on the ground level. Which meant that anyone could come along and creepily look in on someone while the person was sleeping.
In all respects? It sounded like a perfectly normal thing, a perfectly creepy normal thing, but a perfectly normal thing.
But something about it just stuck out to Clarke, and not just for creepy reasons. Something felt off in a different way.
And Clarke couldn't figure out why. But it just felt off.
Then there was that one other weird incident that happened a couple of months ago.
Clarke liked eating fruit. And she loved pineapple, peaches and oranges. But she couldn't stand bananas. She just couldn't.
They were probably one of her least favorite foods. This was why when a couple of months ago, when Jillian and Clint had come back from the grocery store, bringing a bunch of things, including, unfortunately, a few bananas, as soon as some of those bananas were eaten and there was only one left and everyone else had had their fill, and Clint had looked at Clarke and said, teasing, "I presume you don't want to eat this?" Clarke's one and only reaction?
Clarke's reaction to her adoptive father's question, was to go to the counter where the banana was, pick it up, go to an opened window, swing her arm back and throw the banana at full strength, right out of that window, making Clint, Wells, Lydia, Jillian, Zachary and Lila burst out laughing, and causing Laura and Cooper both to gasp. Jessie was still small, which was why she didn't know what to make of what Clarke was doing or why people were laughing.
However, when Clarke threw the banana out the window in disgust, she didn't just hear laughter from her family.
She heard it from the woods, too.
Clarke had looked out the window in alarm, and looked at the woods, almost positive that she had just heard women's laughter from somewhere. From some undefined location.
It was the same reason why she was staring into the forest that surrounded the Barton home.
She felt eyes on her.
And it didn't feel like a simple bear, wolf, coyote, deer or anything else, was looking at her.
And the worst part was, she couldn't see what was looking at her. Whatever was staring at her? It had kept itself out of her sight well. As it had for years.
Clarke got up and went back inside, locking the door quickly, but she knew that probably wouldn't do anything.
Whatever was following her, if her paranoia was justified? Then locked doors and locked windows, would do nothing.
Clarke wanted to think that the things that she had seen and heard were dreams and only dreams. But she wasn't sure she could only shrug it off as dreams any longer. Maybe they never had been dreams in the first place.
In the forest, where Clarke had been watching like a hawk, prior, a group of vampires, all women, observed Clarke disappear into the house.
Many of them snickered.
There, in the forest, always watching, Dinah, Helena, Diana, Natasha, Yelena, Jennifer, Felicia, Hope, Shayera, Tora, Beatriz, Melina, Thundra, Sable, Sigrid, Wanda, Maria, Carol, Mari, Brunnhilde, Sif, Hela, Anastasia Kravinoff, Gamora and Nebula, were waiting.
They knew that Clarke was beginning to suspect the truth. That she had been stalked for years now.
But that didn't matter.
Only a few more years would pass. In eight or so years, they would show themselves to her. Then it would be time for them to take Clarke, and sire her.