[fic] shall i play the hunted? (2/13)
fic: shall i play the hunted?
fandom: the 100
characters: Clarke, Abbie, Bravenlarke, Flarke, Octavia/Lincoln, Finn, Anya, ensemble
word count: ~1400
summary: in the stories, red riding hood was seduced by a wolf and saved by a huntsman. there’s never been a case of stars and girls with eyes as sharp as knives. this isn’t your grandmother’s tale (or maybe it always was)
a/n: thanks to the always perfect arsenic_lies, this fic has it's own playlist (with cover-art by me!)
[only one of us is afraid]The first thing she thinks when the monitors come online and the hundred are spread out before her, a stream of information on computer screens with numbers and silent photos and facts, is Clarke better fucking remember to take those pills, because she can see it right there in black and white on the screen in front of her.
Clarke is responding differently to the Ground than the rest of them are.
She digs four perfect half-moons into her palm and wipes away the blood on her dark pants before continuing on.
So nothing has really changed, then.
Only absolutely everything has.
(She can feel it on the back of her neck, her hair rising at every motion and her senses slowly bleeding in to each other; she can feel that scent in her skin like an itch and that light flickering overhead is producing a strong, sweet taste on her tongue.
He thought she wanted to get pregnant when they were so young because she was so excited to be a mother. She couldn’t tell him - he guessed later, she figures - that it was a survival instinct. The four months between her mother’s… death and Clarke’s conception were the longest of her life.
You needed a pack, he says at one point. She storms out and doesn’t return for a couple of days, losing herself in blood and the hustle of the clinic. When she skulks back through the door without an apology, she can almost love him more for not asking for one.
She apologizes to the blue eyes that stare at her out of a body far too fragile to be carrying such a weight. It’s a silent prayer, less an apology than a confession.
Being a parent helps her see there’s really no way to separate the two. We are all of us always seeking an ear to hear the confession that slows our steps.
She hears them long before they make their presence known.
Hears them in her skin the way it tingles as if it is on fire every step she places onto the ground. Ground that does not belong to her. (Whether she belongs to it or not seems to make no difference.) Walking feels like quicksand. Like she’s already been buried alive and there’s nowhere to go but still her legs move against the weight on instinct. She’s not supposed to be there, she should turn back, and so she presses on.
She screams with the rest when the spear pierces the boy’s chest.
Because that’s what a girl would do. Scream in horror.
A girl wouldn’t hear the spear get tossed into the air and caught in a routine movement (the thrower changing his grip, she suspects, that half a second between it being at his side to at his shoulder), the creak of muscle that contracts and extends, the soft whistle of air as the spear flies through the air. A real girl wouldn’t be so caught up in anticipation, listening with awe to the controlled, practiced movements of a warrior, trapped in the scent emanating through the trees of his adrenaline and pride, that she wouldn’t give warning.
(Her scream of horror is a gasp of wonder choking her.)
A real girl would scream for her friend and be surprised by an invisible attack.
It’s easy to pretend to be a real girl these days.
Abby got into one fight as a teen, with skinny little Richie Reyes. They had been circling each other for years it seemed, never actually butting heads more out of a mutual beneficial need to survive than any other reason.
It was bound to happen.
Abby still carried a scar from Rich’s sharp teeth on her ribcage and rumor has it that her shoulder has never been the same since their incident pulled it out of its socket.
Five minutes of scratching and clawing and biting like the world was ending and they were dragging each other into the abyss. And then it was over. And no one ever spoke of it again, except in whispers.
(No one speaks of it… no one knows… that for three frozen minutes before the blood began to run their lips and teeth and tongues played a very different game; just as painful, just as harsh, .)
Turning around in the mess hall and seeing Richie’s eyes, yet full of an alarming sense of innocence, staring out from another girl’s face was like coming up for air seconds before drowning. She had to hold her body back from embracing the girl right there, an echo of her own past.
Clarke may be gone and her blood may be pumping in her ears so loud she can’t even hear the dull roar of the Ark’s engines anymore, but suddenly her body felt a certain amount of peace.
Fighting the whole world is exhausting. Feeling that nervous energy bouncing around, seeing a threat around every corner, giving into that battle for your peace of mind merely allows the threat to win without ever showing its face.
Looking into Raven Reyes’ eyes, Abby felt the peace that comes from finally being confronted with the enemy.
Finally understanding exactly what is at stake.
She’s driven half mad with a strange desire to drag her teeth down his long throat. She is no longer certain if the longing is to draw blood or to stop his breath. She is no longer certain if those two things are completely separate needs after all. Blood and desire.
She can feel him beating behind her. His heartbeat steady. It is the rhythm by which she walks. Keeping pace with his steadiness.
She hears his words and they come to her through a fog. There are things that are so much more important now than words. The scent of his sweat clinging to his skin. The thin breath he hisses in when she bends over to adjust her shoelace. The way his steadiness is echoed in the trees, in the wind, in the very air around her.
The way he is the only one that feels like a part of the wildness that is clinging to her - lingering fingertips of longing twirling through her hair and tugging at her feet.
She thinks she could run through him the way the forest beckons her to run across its solid earth and in the end she’d be the one to fall to her knees.
Only one of is afraid, words are turning sour on her tongue these days. She talks so much more now than she ever had reason to. Each word feels like destruction.
Especially when they aren’t true.
Everyone is afraid.
She is terrified.
Ironically, not of the creature that is stalking them through the trees. Not of the testosterone building up around her as one male after another asserts their desire for her presence, or for dominance, or for the safety that comes from the momentary high of feeling superior. Not of the shadows lurking behind each tree.
She knows so much more than them.
And that’s what terrifies her.
No one notices that her flinch is just a second too late. No one seems to notice that she spun towards the creature bounding out of the shadows a second too soon.
No one saw her hold herself back, saw her hands clench, saw her eyes go dark and black when the creature appeared.
No one saw her wipe blood off her hands from where long fingernails had curved four perfect moons into her palm.
She apes the boy with the long hair who smells human - all metal and cold and musty, unused. She plants her feet on the ground to the drumming of the heart of the boy with wildness clinging to his hair. She shies away from the boy who breathes her name on his lips with ease, he knows too much, he will sense a difference in her.
She shrieks in terror at a monster and it hides her tears of frustration.
Oh how she longs to tear something apart with her bare hands. Oh how she is envious of a kill. Oh how she bristles at the weapons that keep him - her echo - from falling into the trenches with her.
Oh how she cries to think that he will always be standing there, just there, clinging to the metal of their birth while she rolls in the mud at his feet; the mud that calls out to the blood in her veins.
She thinks lingeringly of her teeth on his throat, his blood on her tongue, his hands bruising her skin. I could drag you down, she thinks.
And so she doesn't.
Only one of them is afraid.
Wouldn’t he laugh to know that the scared one is her.
fandom: the 100
characters: Clarke, Abbie, Bravenlarke, Flarke, Octavia/Lincoln, Finn, Anya, ensemble
word count: ~1400
summary: in the stories, red riding hood was seduced by a wolf and saved by a huntsman. there’s never been a case of stars and girls with eyes as sharp as knives. this isn’t your grandmother’s tale (or maybe it always was)
a/n: thanks to the always perfect arsenic_lies, this fic has it's own playlist (with cover-art by me!)
[only one of us is afraid]The first thing she thinks when the monitors come online and the hundred are spread out before her, a stream of information on computer screens with numbers and silent photos and facts, is Clarke better fucking remember to take those pills, because she can see it right there in black and white on the screen in front of her.
Clarke is responding differently to the Ground than the rest of them are.
She digs four perfect half-moons into her palm and wipes away the blood on her dark pants before continuing on.
So nothing has really changed, then.
Only absolutely everything has.
(She can feel it on the back of her neck, her hair rising at every motion and her senses slowly bleeding in to each other; she can feel that scent in her skin like an itch and that light flickering overhead is producing a strong, sweet taste on her tongue.
He thought she wanted to get pregnant when they were so young because she was so excited to be a mother. She couldn’t tell him - he guessed later, she figures - that it was a survival instinct. The four months between her mother’s… death and Clarke’s conception were the longest of her life.
You needed a pack, he says at one point. She storms out and doesn’t return for a couple of days, losing herself in blood and the hustle of the clinic. When she skulks back through the door without an apology, she can almost love him more for not asking for one.
She apologizes to the blue eyes that stare at her out of a body far too fragile to be carrying such a weight. It’s a silent prayer, less an apology than a confession.
Being a parent helps her see there’s really no way to separate the two. We are all of us always seeking an ear to hear the confession that slows our steps.
She hears them long before they make their presence known.
Hears them in her skin the way it tingles as if it is on fire every step she places onto the ground. Ground that does not belong to her. (Whether she belongs to it or not seems to make no difference.) Walking feels like quicksand. Like she’s already been buried alive and there’s nowhere to go but still her legs move against the weight on instinct. She’s not supposed to be there, she should turn back, and so she presses on.
She screams with the rest when the spear pierces the boy’s chest.
Because that’s what a girl would do. Scream in horror.
A girl wouldn’t hear the spear get tossed into the air and caught in a routine movement (the thrower changing his grip, she suspects, that half a second between it being at his side to at his shoulder), the creak of muscle that contracts and extends, the soft whistle of air as the spear flies through the air. A real girl wouldn’t be so caught up in anticipation, listening with awe to the controlled, practiced movements of a warrior, trapped in the scent emanating through the trees of his adrenaline and pride, that she wouldn’t give warning.
(Her scream of horror is a gasp of wonder choking her.)
A real girl would scream for her friend and be surprised by an invisible attack.
It’s easy to pretend to be a real girl these days.
Abby got into one fight as a teen, with skinny little Richie Reyes. They had been circling each other for years it seemed, never actually butting heads more out of a mutual beneficial need to survive than any other reason.
It was bound to happen.
Abby still carried a scar from Rich’s sharp teeth on her ribcage and rumor has it that her shoulder has never been the same since their incident pulled it out of its socket.
Five minutes of scratching and clawing and biting like the world was ending and they were dragging each other into the abyss. And then it was over. And no one ever spoke of it again, except in whispers.
(No one speaks of it… no one knows… that for three frozen minutes before the blood began to run their lips and teeth and tongues played a very different game; just as painful, just as harsh, .)
Turning around in the mess hall and seeing Richie’s eyes, yet full of an alarming sense of innocence, staring out from another girl’s face was like coming up for air seconds before drowning. She had to hold her body back from embracing the girl right there, an echo of her own past.
Clarke may be gone and her blood may be pumping in her ears so loud she can’t even hear the dull roar of the Ark’s engines anymore, but suddenly her body felt a certain amount of peace.
Fighting the whole world is exhausting. Feeling that nervous energy bouncing around, seeing a threat around every corner, giving into that battle for your peace of mind merely allows the threat to win without ever showing its face.
Looking into Raven Reyes’ eyes, Abby felt the peace that comes from finally being confronted with the enemy.
Finally understanding exactly what is at stake.
She’s driven half mad with a strange desire to drag her teeth down his long throat. She is no longer certain if the longing is to draw blood or to stop his breath. She is no longer certain if those two things are completely separate needs after all. Blood and desire.
She can feel him beating behind her. His heartbeat steady. It is the rhythm by which she walks. Keeping pace with his steadiness.
She hears his words and they come to her through a fog. There are things that are so much more important now than words. The scent of his sweat clinging to his skin. The thin breath he hisses in when she bends over to adjust her shoelace. The way his steadiness is echoed in the trees, in the wind, in the very air around her.
The way he is the only one that feels like a part of the wildness that is clinging to her - lingering fingertips of longing twirling through her hair and tugging at her feet.
She thinks she could run through him the way the forest beckons her to run across its solid earth and in the end she’d be the one to fall to her knees.
Only one of is afraid, words are turning sour on her tongue these days. She talks so much more now than she ever had reason to. Each word feels like destruction.
Especially when they aren’t true.
Everyone is afraid.
She is terrified.
Ironically, not of the creature that is stalking them through the trees. Not of the testosterone building up around her as one male after another asserts their desire for her presence, or for dominance, or for the safety that comes from the momentary high of feeling superior. Not of the shadows lurking behind each tree.
She knows so much more than them.
And that’s what terrifies her.
No one notices that her flinch is just a second too late. No one seems to notice that she spun towards the creature bounding out of the shadows a second too soon.
No one saw her hold herself back, saw her hands clench, saw her eyes go dark and black when the creature appeared.
No one saw her wipe blood off her hands from where long fingernails had curved four perfect moons into her palm.
She apes the boy with the long hair who smells human - all metal and cold and musty, unused. She plants her feet on the ground to the drumming of the heart of the boy with wildness clinging to his hair. She shies away from the boy who breathes her name on his lips with ease, he knows too much, he will sense a difference in her.
She shrieks in terror at a monster and it hides her tears of frustration.
Oh how she longs to tear something apart with her bare hands. Oh how she is envious of a kill. Oh how she bristles at the weapons that keep him - her echo - from falling into the trenches with her.
Oh how she cries to think that he will always be standing there, just there, clinging to the metal of their birth while she rolls in the mud at his feet; the mud that calls out to the blood in her veins.
She thinks lingeringly of her teeth on his throat, his blood on her tongue, his hands bruising her skin. I could drag you down, she thinks.
And so she doesn't.
Only one of them is afraid.
Wouldn’t he laugh to know that the scared one is her.