Title: Retrograde (1/1)

Fandom: House of Cards, 2x02

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Frank Underwood/Claire Underwood

Summary: "Every time I think of her, pinned down like that, I strangle her, Francis. So she doesn't strangle me."

Author's Note: This is my first time with the House of Cards fandom. Let me know what you think.

. . .

"You think I don't want to smash things? I know what that anger is more than you can imagine. When he was on top of me…"

"We don't have to talk about it."

"No, I want to. …When he was on top of me, I pressed my hand… With everything I could, I pressed it into his face. I pressed it so hard, I broke his nose. That didn't stop him. He shoved the sheets in my mouth. I could barely breathe. …Every time I think of her, pinned down like that, I strangle her, Francis. So she doesn't strangle me. I have to. We have to. The alternative is… It's unlivable."

[2x02]

. . .

She had succeeded in silencing that little girl, obliterating her almost completely, for the last thirty years. Every once in a while, of course, a little whimper escaped. Sometimes Claire let her guard down, and the girl inside broke free and gasped for breath, but Claire always made sure she didn't get a chance to scream. She shoved the girl back down onto the bed, tightened her hands around the girl's throat, and squeezed as hard as she could. She squeezed so hard she could feel the bones of her knuckles tear through her skin, and then she kept squeezing. The sight of the blood on her hands both drove her and soothed her. It gave her power.

Rape isn't about sex, it's about power.

That's what everyone said, afterwards. Not that she told anyone. She kept it to herself. She didn't call the police and she didn't tell her roommate and she didn't go to the university's medical center. Instead, for months, she wore nothing but turtlenecks or scarves, and she kept her sunglasses on even when she was inside, so no one would see her bloodshot eyes or be able to glimpse the bruises he'd bequeathed her that night. She didn't look herself in the mirror for weeks, not even when putting in her contacts, because she didn't want to see the face of that battered little girl staring back at her.

She bought a pregnancy test at the drugstore a week afterwards, and when it was positive, she made an appointment at a nearby clinic for the earliest opening. When she got back, she took reference books out of the library and, under the guise of a research project about domestic violence, planned her own physical and mental recovery. She practiced stamping down the memories when they arose; every day, every hour, every minute, that they threatened to take her over, she fought back like the dying animal that she was, and forced herself out of the grave he'd left her half-buried in. She could hear herself—no, not herself—she could hear that weak little girl crying and begging and fighting for breath, sobbing Please, please, please, and Claire silenced her at once. She shoved the memories into the deepest, darkest, most remote pocket of her mind, over and over again, until she'd half-convinced herself that they were nightmares from someone else's life.

She started running in earnest then, to facilitate the process with a mindless, exhausting activity, and to get away from her dorm room and the campus and all the people. She ran obsessively—twice a day, always, once in the morning and once at night. She never ran when the sun was up; instead, she raced the coming of the dawn and she chased after the fallen sunset. Claire ran long and hard into darkness so often that her roommate started worrying that she was putting herself in danger by doing so. You do know that there are men who prey on lone women like that, don't you? Claire didn't argue the point. And neither did she stop running.

When the hairdresser at the salon presented her with a hand mirror after she was done, and asked her what she thought of her new look, Claire didn't take it. It looks fine, she said, continuing to stare down at her knees as she had been doing for the last thirty minutes. She didn't need to see her reflection to know what her hair looked like; she didn't even care what it looked like. All she needed was to cut it off, and to feel it fall away forever. All she needed was for her hair to be short enough so that no one would ever be able to gather its length in a fist and drag her around by its roots again.

Francis was the first—and only—person she ever told about Dalton and what he'd done to her. He was furious when he heard it, so furious that—for the first time ever—she witnessed him speak and act illogically. We'll take him to court, Francis said at once, standing up and beginning to pace as his mind rushed around the problem, acknowledging but not absorbing it, searching for a solution. I'll call the police right now; we can have him arrested tonight and brought in and when it goes to trial—

Claire almost didn't want to interrupt him, for he was so passionate, so determined, and she loved it when he got like this. He was unstoppable when he set his mind to something, and usually it was thrilling to watch him go after what he wanted, for he always won, no matter what. But this something—this was not achievable, not in the real world. Not anymore. And he should not waste his time, his power, or his energy on it.

You do realize it'll be his word against mine, don't you? Besides, there's no proof anymore, she reminded him, though for a split second, she imagined there was. Living, breathing proof, proof that had survived and matured and—No. She had killed that proof before it could ever get the chance to destroy her.

Francis was still going over the problem, diving into the factual side of it so he wouldn't have to face the emotional side, and she watched him closely as he worked. He was thinking on justice, but she could see in the flat set of his mouth and in the cold fury of his eyes that it was not legal justice. Then I'll go and get a gun, he said simply, solving the problem with a partially silenced pop! in the doorway of Dalton's home. I'll buy a gun and I'll hunt him down and I'll shoot him like the rabid dog he is.

Claire shook her head at this, frowning at such a messy, obvious scene. If I wanted him shot, Francis, don't you think I would've done that myself years ago? I didn't tell you this tonight so you would go out and punish him for me.

He looked at her with some bewilderment then, with the Well… why did you tell me? clear in his curious, calculating eyes, and she knew she needed to explain herself, for both of them. She did not have a history of reminiscing over the past; they both shared a fanatical devotion to the future. So why the sudden nostalgia? the frown on his face asked her.

I found the ring this morning, she told him quietly, watching with some regret as his cheek twitched involuntarily in recognition. No doubt he'd wanted the proposal to be a surprise. She would have liked to experience it like that. I found it, and I felt you should know this about me before we go any further.

They didn't talk about it much after that. He didn't press her and she had no inclination to open up old wounds, and so they stayed quiet on the subject. He proposed a couple weeks later, putting the ring on her finger before she'd even said yes, and they put that discussion of justice behind them, along with the rest of their pre-marriage lives. Months passed, then years. Decades. She threw herself into the creation, and later expansion, of the Clear Water Initiative; he pursued, and later won control of, Congress. They changed the world together, in their separate but sometimes overlapping spheres, and their marriage was a relatively happy and honest one. They each had their indiscretions from time to time, of course, but they always came back home to each other at the end of the day, and that was really all that mattered the next morning.

She had worked hard to close off that part of her life—to truly make it a bad memory of another woman's life—and for the better part of thirty years, it worked. For thirty years, she had succeeded in strangling that little girl, silencing her nearly completely until—

There he was one morning, his face smiling up at her from a picture lying on her kitchen counter. Her assistant was saying something about a medal ceremony Claire would have to attend this evening for a couple of generals, but she heard nothing after the name Dalton McGinnis. For what must have been only a second, but what felt like an endless eternity, her brain stopped working as it usually did, and that tiny little pocket of hell burst open from the back of her mind with a ferocious vengeance. She didn't even have time to blink, and yet somehow he was on top of her again, his weight surrounding her, bruising her, consuming her. There was his hot breath in her ear, and his blood falling onto her face, and his body shoving its way inside hers, splitting her open, splitting her apart, destroying who she had been—

As if from far away, her assistant's voice came back to her. She was saying something about Dalton being a commissioned general in the Marines now, and Claire found that sickly fitting. He'd always been good at giving orders to those mashed under his steely thumbs. Shut your mouth. Don't fight me. Feel it, baby. She'd heard, years ago, that he'd gone into the military, and with all the wars, she'd simply assumed that he'd get blown up overseas, in some far-off country. Every once in a while, she felt the urge to look him up among the lists of fallen and captured, but she resisted the urge. Part of letting go of the past was acting as if it hadn't ever existed, no matter if it haunted you.

Sometimes, though, when she had been feeling poorly, she had pictured how he might have died. Sometimes it was an IED, or a stray bullet, or gruesome torture: all realistic outcomes, and yet none of them, not even the bloodiest, was the least bit satisfying for her. That was why she'd never looked up his cause of death—not because she'd been scared to find him alive, but because any death of his that was not doled out by her hands was a better death than he deserved.

In the split-second it took for Claire to silence that little girl, regain herself, and remember where she was and who she was, she made a silent promise to herself. She would go to the ceremony because she had to, but she would neither speak to Dalton, nor would she speak to Francis about him. She'd neglected to tell him, all those years ago when they'd spoken of it, the name of the man who'd raped her, and she didn't see any reason why he needed to know now. She would get through tonight and, once again, put Dalton and everything he'd done to her behind her. That weak little girl inside her might try to push to the surface again, gasping desperately for breath while she cried out for mercy, but Claire would do away with her like she always did. Like she'd so expertly been taught.

And then she would continue moving forward, never sparing so much as a second to look back on where she'd come from.

. . .

Author's Note: Claire has been my favorite character since the pilot, but this episode blew everything else I'd seen of her or known of her out of the water. Hopefully I did her some justice in this.

Reviews would be so, so very welcome. Thank you for reading.