Disclaimer: Do not own Marvel or The 100
Warnings for major character deaths, planned murder, stalking, depression, reckless behavior, mentions of underage sex, and rape.
As mentioned in the summary? This is a ghost fic. And as said, Clarke's soulmates are dead. So, take a wild guess who the ghosts are supposed to be in this fic and who is going to be haunting Clarke.
Death's call
She wished she could shut off her memories sometimes, if not often.
Because…well, she doubted anyone would want to do otherwise, should they have experienced what she had experienced.
Clarke Griffin, age twenty-eight, had lived with knowing that all of her romantic partner soulmates were dead, for fourteen years, ever since she had been fourteen years old.
Clarke had used to have the names and symbols of her romantic partner soulmates all over her arm. And it was rare that someone have more than one romantic partner soulmate.
Clarke? She had had twenty-seven.
But now? Now, they were all dead.
One day, when she had been fourteen, she had multiple romantic partner soulmate names and symbols on her arm, and then on that same day, those names had disappeared completely.
Which meant one thing.
All of her mates were dead. They had all died at the same time.
But how was that possible?
But Clarke knew for a fact that it had to be true, because the moment those names and symbols had disappeared, she had felt it-that legendary black hole that formed in her chest, when her mates died.
Everyone knew that it happened. That when someone's romantic partner soulmate died, that person would feel a hole in their soul, like a piece of them was missing.
Clarke had had twenty-seven soulmates and all of them were dead. Had been for fourteen years.
Did that mean that twenty-seven pieces of her soul were missing?
Thinking about that possibility on its own, was just plain disturbing.
For the past fourteen years, Clarke had desperately tried to bury herself in a billion other things, desperately trying not to think about all that she had lost.
Reading fiction books, watching TV, her job, drawing, painting and drinking.
It almost worked at times. But it wasn't enough.
And even with all her trauma, and all the loss she had experienced, she knew she had done a lot that was commendable. Even with her nightmares and issues and memories of being abandoned and her daddy dying when she was only eight, and losing all of her soulmates fourteen years ago, she still was able to maintain some sort of life. Her job, her hobbies and her very few friends.
But it didn't change that everything hurt when she started thinking about things too much. The moment her mind started to go in the direction of all she had lost, she would feel that black hole inside her open up further, dragging her deeper into pain.
Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain. That was all she was used to. Well, most of the time, anyway.
It was why, along with all the rest of the things she had used to numb herself, all the many distractions, she had tended to use sex as yet, one more distraction.
Her abandonment, her father's death, and especially after the deaths of all her mates, she would indulge in sex a lot, since she was fourteen, and no, she didn't care how unhealthy it probably was.
She did a lot more unhealthy things besides that.
Her father dying at the age of six from cancer. Her mother abandoning her only a few days later.
Her being thrown into an orphanage and moved from one family to the next, most of which tossed her away, as soon as they realized she had issues and wasn't the blank slate that they wanted to mold into their obedient little child.
So, she indulged in what she wanted to indulge in.
It wasn't like she had anything else.
No one had wanted her as a child.
So, she might as well do what she wanted now.
And when she had been fourteen on that day, in the orphanage, fourteen years ago, and had tried to ignore the pain in her heart, watching much younger children without issues be taken in, while she and other older kids were left to rot, Clarke had felt a hole in her heart and had looked down at her arm and had found the soulmate marks and names gone.
Her mates had died. All of them.
And that had been it for her.
She had made the decision.
She would care about no one from then on, but herself. Because all she had, was herself.
She did what she wanted, when she wanted.
And so, soon after the deaths of her mates, soon after that black hole in her chest had spread throughout her body, making her feel emptier and emptier by the day? She had gone out, getting out of the orphanage, around the age of seventeen and had found some other reckless high school teenager, also seventeen, to fuck her. She had stolen condoms from another high school student-one of the boy's friends and had fucked him.
When the boy had asked her what her name was, she had laughed in his face and had left him, going back to the orphanage hours after she had let him fuck her.
Clarke, regardless of what people thought about her sleeping around a lot, was not just some horny, blond ditz.
She knew what people often thought of her and her sexual activities.
But she would let her partners join her in whatever room they had sex in-in her room, in their room, in a hotel room, in some public area, and she would let them see her arm-let them see that she had no soulmate mark, and allow them to ask about her not having a soulmate name or mark on her arm.
And as soon as she would hear that, she would block everything else out in her mind. She would let the physical stuff take over.
She wouldn't ever answer the person that she intended to have sex with and would just kiss them and start to grind up against them.
And by that point, it was clear that she would usually succeed in distracting them too.
The moment she kissed them and got to the beginning of them having sex, the partner she had for the time, to forget their question about Clarke's absent soulmate mark or soulmate marks.
And usually when she was riding the partner she had at the time, when she was in them or they were in her, everything else fell away.
And what was more, Clarke knew that she was aware that they would ask about her absent soulmate marks again, after sex.
And she looked forward to them asking, because that would give her the excuse to tell them to get the fuck out of the bed and get out of her life.
End of story.
For her, it was just a game. A cycle. She got sex, and then when her partner asked her about her lack of soulmate marks, she would have an excuse to get her sexual partner at the time, the hell out of her life.
She had slept with men and with women.
But the end results were always the same.
She got sex and then would send them out of her life when they got too nosy.
Not like she cared about said sexual partners.
They were just a means to an end.
She went down the hall-she intended to go to the kitchen to get her own food, when she heard the ringtone of her phone, causing her to stop walking in the middle of the hallway.
She reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone and looked at who was calling.
She scoffed, when she recognized the number of her boss; Dante Wallace, on the screen of her phone and she swiped the answer button and pressed the phone to her ear. "Hello?" She asked Wallace, trying to keep the boredom out of her voice.
Wallace answered, "Hello, Griffin? It's Dante Wallace."
Clarke fought the need to roll her eyes. Really? She never would have guessed that it was Dante Wallace.
Granted, under her saved contacts, she had saved Dante Wallace's number, under the title, "Shit-heel," but she remembered the names of every person who she saved under the insults she had titled for them. So, she knew that when she had seen the signature of the number as, "shit-heel," she had known that it was Dante Wallace.
"Hi, Mr. Wallace," Clarke said, trying to keep her voice neutral, "How can I help you?"
Wallace answered, "There is a navy ship that was found recently, off the shore, I'm sure you heard about it on the news."
Clarke frowned, hearing this. Yes. She had heard about the navy ship. On the news. What did that have to do with anything?
Wallace continued, "And as you know, our company lives off of procuring important items and selling them. Which leads me to the next item. I want you to accompany a team to this navy ship and see if there is anything valuable in the ship. And bring it to my office. As much as you and the rest of the team can find, if anything."
Clarke's eyes widened and she almost cursed Dante out, almost, but didn't.
Because honestly, he was going to have her do that?
Have her and the rest of the team scavenge a ship? Steal from the potential dead that were onboard the ship?!
She severely hoped that there were no dead bodies onboard the ship, but she doubted that there weren't.
She knew what those navy ships usually carried. Weapons, cargo and yes, people too.
So, unfortunately, she had already gathered that there were people aboard that ship. But deceased people. Deceased people that Dante Wallace wanted her and the rest of her team to steal from.
Clarke felt cold at that. Then again, Dante Wallace could usually make her disgusted easily.
The "crack team," in question that she would be assigned with, she had worked with before and knew well.
It was probably best that she didn't like any of them. After all, if she didn't like them, then that meant that they couldn't do anything that disappointed her.
She knew for sure that at least three of those in her assigned team; John Murphy, Jasper Jordan, and Atom Esposito, would be more than happy to snatch any valuables that they could from the destroyed navy ship.
The others, Raven Reyes, Nathan Miller and Monty Green, would more or less do their jobs well. Be self-centered shits, sure. But they would do their jobs.
But only because they knew that there would be consequences.
Raven, for example, knew that she couldn't bring the findings that she and her team discovered at the sites that they scavenged, to her thug of a boyfriend, Bellamy Blake.
Clarke had met Bellamy Blake before. And had met Bellamy's younger sister, Octavia Blake too.
Both of them were horrific people.
Octavia was entitled and self-important and acted like a violent psychopath. And Bellamy? He somehow was even worse.
Clarke would listen to him talk and she would find herself sure that he was a sociopath. She had no idea if she was right or not and she certainly was no psychologist, but he sure as hell acted like one.
The point was, he creeped the hell out of her.
And she made sure that she was never alone with him when he was around.
But Raven knew that there would be consequences if she gave anything valuable to her pimp of a boyfriend and soulmate and his sister.
And yes, Raven and Bellamy were soulmates, as far as Clarke knew. Wasn't that much of a surprise. The two of them were both shitty enough people, that it made sense that fate would pair them together.
Serious, Clarke sometimes felt like she might spill out bile when she was around the Blake siblings. They were repulsive.
Wallace began to tell her more about the job and she grimaced. She really didn't want to have to do this.
But she knew it was either that or look for another job, in a dwindling job market.
So, unfortunately, her options were limited.
The navy ship in question? The U.S.S. San Diego, had disappeared fourteen years ago. And it suddenly reappeared in present day. It had washed ashore, and it had yet to be dragged by other ships to the docks. It was left open and available to investigators, which allowed Clarke and other scavengers to sneak in, if they wanted.
The crew of the U.S.S. San Diego hadn't been found. Them being alive, wasn't to be expected, since the ship had disappeared for fourteen years, so, it was very unlikely that the crew was alive.
But the thing was, the first investigators had gotten onboard the ship. And no one was found on the ship.
Not just no living people, but no dead people, either.
No bodies.
No corpses.
So, what the hell happened to the crew of the ship?
No one knew. No body and no living people had been found, so, what happened?
There was just a washed up navy ship without any living person or any corpse or skeleton aboard.
And the crew that had been aboard that ship, was missing.
So, no one really knew any of any possible explanation. Of course, there were already theories all over the place. People had already spread theories all over the web, coming up with ridiculous stories as possibilities.
The ridiculous theories ranged from alien abduction, to murders done by the government, to spies from a foreign country-basically, it ran across the gambit.
One preposterous theory after another.
But the point was, since no person or skeleton or whatever, had been found on the ship, everyone just knew that the ship was open for scavenging even if it wasn't legal to do.
So, while Clarke was disgusted, she wasn't sure she was surprised by Dante's instructions.
Dante went on about what would be done. Clarke tried to ignore him. She knew that he would only keep talking and not actually listen to her silence. She was to get her instructions and nothing else.
After he finished explaining, she thanked him and he hung up, then she put her phone away.
She huffed. Well, great. Just one more thing to distract herself with. It was reassuring that she had that, even if it made her stomach turn.
She went downstairs to get her food.
Dante's instructions were simple. She was to meet up with her crew in two days to go to the ship and scavenge it.
She would keep herself busy until then.
She decided to check the dating app she had on her phone.
She checked over the supposed "selections."
As usual, most of the men trying to sell themselves on the app, were embellishing over details that were most likely fabricated in every way, and most of the women, as far as Clarke could tell, would probably just want a serious relationship, which she was in no way interested in.
So, she closed up her cell phone, sighed, and, she went downstairs.
When downstairs, she grabbed her stuff, including the condoms, stuffed the condoms in her pockets, walked out of the house, locked it, and went to her car.
She drove into San Diego's downtown area, parked the car, exited the car, and locked it up.
She then went to the nearby bar, which she knew would suit her needs.
She had been there enough times to know what to expect while being there.
She approached the bar, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her wallet, pulling out her ID and showing it to the bouncer. Said bouncer, Roan, nodded to her, and she saw the recognition in his eyes as she passed him, putting her ID away.
Roan's recognition of her was in no way a surprise.
After all, she was a frequent person here.
She moved through the bar.
To be perfectly blunt, she had learned how to sneak into this bar, long before she had turned twenty-one.
And she was positive that Roan had known.
She got to the floor where dancers were writhing around, and she instantly began dancing alongside them, slamming into them, feeling them grind against her, her grinding against them.
Later on in the night, she found someone to fuck her. A woman. The two of them went in the back of the club and the woman put her hand in Clarke's pants, pressing her palm against Clarke's cunt, grinding against Clarke's leg, as she bit Clarke's neck.
After Clarke came over the other woman's hand, the woman went down on her knees and ate Clarke out.
After, Clarke pushed the other woman against the wall, pushed her leg between the other woman's legs and ground her leg against the woman's cunt and the woman came, Clarke then put her hand between the other woman's legs and fingered her.
They fucked a few more times, before Clarke left, ignoring the woman asking her breathlessly if they wanted to stay in touch.
Clarke left, trying to tell herself she wasn't being cruel. That her leaving before the woman got too attached, was for the best.
Because Clarke knew that she was too destructive, too chaotic and too pained to maintain any real relation. Not the way she was now.
Not after seeing the soulmate marks and names on her arm, disappear, and realizing that it ultimately meant that all her romantic partner soulmates, had died.
After her mates' deaths? Clarke had entered this fucked up painful state, and she always found ways of distracting herself, but of also spreading her pain.
Which was why she had to leave.
Why she always got away from her fuckbuddies, as soon as they were done fucking.
She felt no attachment to her fuckbuddies, but she also knew that said fuckbuddies being with her outside of just boning, would be cruel, the way her mind worked, after all these years of knowing her romantic partner soulmates were dead.
She left the club, checking the time on her phone.
It was almost 4 o'clock in the morning. She rushed to her car, got in and drove back to her home. She parked the car, got into her house, locked the doors up and headed up back upstairs and got ready for bed.
She knew that she was going to have to get ready for bed, as she was going to have to deal with what was happening tomorrow with the navy ship.
The next morning, Clarke got up, got ready for work, dressed, left the house, locked the house, got into the car and drove off to her work.
She drove up to the driveway, near the ocean's edge, where the navy ship was washed up. She got out of her car, closed the car up, locked it, and walked off to the beach.
She saw several figures already there.
She knew who they were, even if she despised them.
Raven Reyes, Monty Green, Jasper Jordan, Nathan Miller, John Murphy and Atom Esposito.
It wasn't in any way a surprise to her that they were there before her. Murphy, Atom, Raven and Jasper, most likely wanted to stare at the contents of the ship and claim it for themselves-the difference between Raven, Jasper, Murphy and Atom, was that Raven knew better than to steal anything.
Miller and Monty would be good at their jobs and not touch anything-Miller would just be a little bitch and Monty wouldn't say anything to dissuade any of the others.
Clarke reached the group, pulling out her sunglasses and putting them on, guarding her eyes from the blazing and unpleasant sunlight.
"Hey, Griffin," Raven sneered, spotting Clarke coming closer, "How nice of you to honor us with your presence."
"Reyes," Clarke said, voice holding the same exact sneer, "Good to know that you finally moved that mouth from sucking off Bellamy's worm-dick, long enough to speak to me."
Raven's eyes narrowed in hate and Clarke smiled far too widely at her.
Murphy burst out laughing, grinning and Clarke fought the urge to glare at him. If nothing else, she supposed Murphy barely cared about anyone, and so, would laugh at anyone when there was an insult thrown out.
Murphy was loyal to one person. Himself.
So, Clarke was in no way impressed by her coworkers' reactions to her.
She nodded to them, her expression cold as she said, "So great to see all of you. Really." Anyone could hear the sarcasm in her voice, "So, we have our assignments?"
"We do," Raven said, a sneer in her voice, "Think it will hurt you to pull your weight this time?"
Clarke fought the need to roll her eyes.
According to Raven, Miller, Jasper, Murphy and Atom, Clarke didn't pull her weight during work.
But she could safely say it was the opposite.
Raven and Monty would try to detect any dangers in the places they went into, and upon not finding any danger, everyone else would go in.
Clarke did at least eighty percent of the work. Raven and the others complained that Clarke didn't do ALL the work.
In other words, they were freeloaders, nothing else.
Clarke forced a cold smile on her face as she moved closer, getting to the rowboat which Dante had loaned to all of them to get to the ship.
"Shall we go?" She asked in a near mocking voice.
"Yeah, yeah," Jasper said, glaring holes into Clarke's back, "It's so great that you showed up. I really will fucking just love having to see you around, you cunt."
Murphy chuckled.
Clarke's teeth ground together.
She always packed away cannisters of pepper spray and a taser.
And she felt a very strong need to take that taser out on Jasper, Murphy and Raven now.
But there was no need for that.
She knew who did the most on jobs. And the important thing? Dante Wallace knew. Which was why Clarke got the most money.
Envy might have been a good motivator, but Clarke always considered it an extremely stupid one.
Because if you felt like someone was making more money than you, based on lack of hard work, then work harder.
Clarke stepped into the rowboat and yelled to her companions, "I'm good with heading to the ship on my own. But just remember, none of you are getting paid if you don't."
She heard a series off scoffs and they headed over to her.
Through a tense silence and Clarke ignoring her companions' glares, they got to the ship.
They stepped onto the ship, ready for whatever exactly they were going to find.
Ready…or so they thought they were.
Deep within the bowels of the ship, specters lurked. Twenty-seven of them, specifically.
They lurked, and they sensed the seven presences that stepped onto the deck of the huge navy ship.
And the twenty-seven specters could feel the presence of one of those seven intruders, in particular.
A young woman.
A young woman who they knew that they had been meant for. A young woman that had been meant for them.
The specters, beings who existed to haunt this ship, after their deaths, fourteen years ago, and they all but laughed in pleasure when they sensed exactly who had just stepped onto the ship.
"Clarke…," one of the specters whispered, the specter in question's desire for the young woman whose name she had spoken, reflected in the eyes of the other specters with her.
They had hoped that they would find her.
They could leave the ship at any time, regardless of what people believed about ghosts-none of it was true, ghosts could leave where they haunted, whenever they wanted.
And they would have, had they not learned that their mate was on the ship.
They stayed close to the ship, because it was what they knew.
But they had traveled to different areas during the fourteen years after their deaths.
They had looked for their mate. For years. But hadn't found her.
And now she was here?
Well, her ghostly mates weren't planning on letting her go.
Not now, not ever.
And how were they going to go about keeping her with them? Well, they were soulmates, after all.
And there was an easy way of keeping someone from leaving a ghost, wasn't there?
It just involved a bit of death, didn't it?
What they were…they could leave the ship anytime, and they had searched for their mate for years. And she was finally here.
When they took her life, she would be with them. For the rest of eternity.
And well….specters were good at taking life from the living.