Disclaimer: Do not own Marvel, DC, The 100 or Jim Henson's the Labyrinth
Warnings for stalking, abduction, unhealthy relationships, trauma and verbal abuse
Tribute for ArsLionessGhostFang.
It will take a lot more than words this time
It had been six years ago.
Clarke had been young when she had first seen them, but they were impossible to forget.
Well, unless they decided to erase one's memories.
That was the level of power they had. Then again, they could do a lot worse, as Clarke knew real well.
When she had first met them, six years ago, when she had been sixteen years old, she had at first feared them, then had come to be angry at them, frustrated. She had even felt cynical against them. But that had been back when she was confident that she could defeat them.
That was back when she had thought she had known the rules.
Clarke Griffin had been forced to stay, by her abusive mother, Abby Griffin, with the rest of her adoptive siblings.
Some of her siblings; Wells, Raven, Sterling, Monroe, Harper, Finn, Monty; they hadn't been too bad.
But the others? The adoptive Blake siblings, Bellamy and Octavia Blake, John Murphy, John Mbege, Nathan Miller, Jasper Jordan; they had never done anything but hurt her and her friends.
So, as a result, Abby adored them.
Abby and her husband, Marcus Kane, who she had married almost as soon as Clarke's father, Jake, had died, when Clarke was ten, always had made a point of making Clarke feel unwanted and unloved.
It was a special talent of her mother's, Clarke had noticed.
Now, that was hard enough, but it was just one of those banal things, horrible as it was, that some people had to deal with.
Verbal abuse and child abuse were just things that happened a lot.
Clarke even had at times hoped that Abby would hit her, because physical abuse was something that social service workers would have actually paid attention to.
Not like they'd pay attention to much else.
Then when Clarke had gotten into a fight with the few siblings she got along with and got tired out, and when she had found that boardgame in the backyard of the house, and had said those stupid words that had condemned everything, said the words that were written on that board, it all had gone to hell.
Very possibly literally, if that was in fact, where those women came from. However, Clarke had been there and having met a lot of people there, she was just going to go ahead and assume that no, it wasn't hell. Or not hell, in the way a lot of people thought it was.
If it was a hell dimension of some sort, it wasn't at all what Clarke had expected.
Clarke had met others there in that dimension. People she cared about and that she knew cared about her.
Six years she had yet to see them, or the women that had stolen her siblings, who Clarke had had to go through the kingdom of, to get her siblings back.
She had won that time.
But now? Why were they here? She thought she had known the rules, but she didn't, it seemed.
Why were they here now? Why now, unless there was something in the rules that she had missed the last time.
Clarke felt her throat go dry, as she watched the figures who had stolen her siblings six years ago, stand before her, looking no different than they had those six years ago.
Clarke had changed since first meeting them. She was now twenty-two years old. She was in college. She had made connections outside of her family.
Her family, who had no memory of that time six years ago, because these women had erased those memories.
Clarke was the only one of them that still remembered.
She had no idea if that was because she had beaten them at the time, or if she only remembered because that was what these women had wanted.
"Y-You can't be here," Clarke mumbled, her heart jumping in her chest, hating that she stuttered.
It was bad enough these women likely could read the shock and fear on their prey's face, it was all the worse that they would be able to hear the fear in her voice.
The college suite was small, but big enough that all of these women were in the same room with her.
Clarke's suitemates had brought parties of people here, while Clarke was in her dorm, trying to study and ignore the laughing and music coming from the next room over.
So, the number of people in this room was not a surprise to her.
Seeing these women at all again, now that was a surprise to her.
"We can't be here?" One of the women, as Clarke recalled, her name was Helena, asked, smirking, "But we were wished to be here."
"Not by me," Clarke snapped, heart still pounding in her chest. Who had wished for them to be here? Certainly, she hadn't wished for them to be here. She had avoided even speaking about them at all, for the past six years, even to herself.
There were times when she had reasoned that she must have imagined everything that had happened, but she would almost instantly afterwards, denounce that thought.
So, she had never even whispered a word about what she had seen six years ago, particularly in case any of these women were listening.
But for some reason, they were here. But she hadn't wished for them to be here.
"No," another of the women, Anya agreed, the far too wide smirk never leaving her face, "Not by you, Clarke. By that ungrateful brother of yours, Jasper. Someone really should keep an eye on that drunkard."
Clarke felt her skin prickle.
Jasper? What the hell did he have to do with this?
"Jasper?" She asked, "What did he do?"
"Exactly what we said," another woman, Natasha answered, her green eyes flashing with dangerous amusement, "He wished for us to be here. He wished that we take you away. He found one of our little traps in your backyard. The boardgame. He found one of our boardgames. And he wished for us to come and take you away. That is who you decided to save from us six years ago. That is his show of gratitude for all you have done for him."
Clarke felt sick.
Jasper had wished for her to be taken away by these women.
No, Jasper wouldn't have remembered what happened six years ago. These women had made sure of it, when they had erased his memories along with the others' memories.
But still? To know that Jasper resented her that much, after everything? After he would get drunk or high all those times, or would stumble and fall and get bruises and cuts and she would patch him up and get him to bed, and all he had for her in response was contempt?
It hurt. She had always known that he, Bellamy, Octavia, Murphy, Miller and Mbege, resented her and were happy to treat her like trash. They treated Wells the same way, and she loathed them for it.
But still, it hurt. She thought after all this time, and with some distance, Jasper might feel less harshly for her.
She was wrong.
There would never be any sort of real familial relationship between herself and them. They would always resent her and lash out.
And now, these women who Clarke had saved them from, were here. To take her.
"So, what now?" Clarke asked, forcing her voice to be harder, not wanting them to hear the unease there, or and not allowing it to shake, "Going to curse me or lock me up? What?"
"No, no," another woman, Niylah responded, her voice soft as always, "Nothing like that. We assure you, no. When we took your ungrateful siblings, it was to keep you from them, because they were unworthy of your presence. It was a gift to you. And now, it's the same thing. We are not doing this as a gift to Jasper. But to you. We told you that we wished for you to stay in our world, the last time."
Clarke stiffened. That was true, yes. These women had asked for her to stay in the demon world where they had come from. But why?
They assured her that they wouldn't touch. Wouldn't even approach her, should she choose to stay in the demon world. Until she was "of age," as they put it. When she was nineteen.
Why exactly they had offered that, she still didn't know, but they pointed out that she could always stay with some of the people she had met in the demon world, namely the Barton family; Clint and Laura Barton and their children.
She still didn't know what their angle was.
"Clarke, has it not occurred to you yet what is happening?" Another of the women, Luna, asked.
Clarke shook her head. No. She definitely still didn't get it. She wasn't completely dense; she had an idea. She had seen the way they had looked at her, the moment they had appeared here in this suite and had seen how they looked her over.
They wanted her, sexually. It certainly explained what they had meant when they had promised her that they wouldn't touch her in any way, until she was nineteen years old.
Still, why? Why did they want her specifically? Surely, she couldn't have been the very first person that had made any wishes, which had led them to being in the human world, right? And she couldn't even have been the very first person that had defeated them, rare as the occurrence might have been, right?
Seeing the confusion on Clarke's face, one of the other women, Tora, sighed and she smiled, "Clarke, we'll explain on the way there. We promise you, we won't do anything at all without your permission, but we'll explain it when we get there."
Clarke's mind tried to come up with some explanation as to why they wanted her, but she couldn't.
The moment she had seen them in this room, she had thought she might need to call her siblings and tell them to run, not give them an explanation, obviously, because they didn't remember anything, but to get as far as they could.
Then again, that wouldn't have done anything, right?
These women were made up of demons and demigods.
They easily would have caught up with her siblings, no matter where they went.
What did physical distance matter to those that had magic and had access to demon dimensions?
Besides, it seemed that these women weren't here for any of her siblings. They were here for her, as they said.
Now what?
Clarke knew exactly what was happening, when she felt the floor under her shift, and felt her surroundings grow blurry.
Without even lifting their fingers, these women were bringing her back to their dimension.
Clarke felt her heart pound, as she looked at the queens of the kingdom that they were taking her back to.
She had defeated them at one time, but she had no illusions that it would work this time.
Clarke felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up on end, and felt a cracking that ran under her feet, and she was being taken to the queens' dimension.
When her surroundings cleared, she would be back in their kingdom. And this time, it would take a lot more than the words, "You have no power over me," to get her out again.
