META TALKS;; CLAIRE && PREGNANCY && SEX
( OVERALL TRIGGERS FOR childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, mention of a miscarriage, mention of wanting an abortion, sexual harassment and rape. Bad and sexist language is also used. Please tread carefully if any of these things trigger you. )
First thing first, this is going to get down and dirty and I am not going to mince words. Claire was sexually abused at the orphanage and the circus. Because of this, she developed C-PTSD/PTSD and has complex emotions towards sex and pregnancy.
** IMPORTANT: Everything has been researched very carefully and some of it is based on my own experiences. Please do not come into my inbox or ims screaming about how I don’t know anything. And yes, well everything in here is a bit dark, it’s something that has been in development for over a few years. This was not spur of the moment, this has been thoughts and headcanons I’ve collected and worked on since starting Claire’s blog originally. If you don’t want to read anything in here, that’s fine. While this headcanon is apart of this blog, not all of this is going to show up in most of the threads, so don’t worry. Also this is part 1/? who knows how many meta talks i’ll be having about Claire.
I’m really nervous about sharing this but I really want to, so that said, let’s get into this.
Her first introduction into sex was after their parents died, because despite how horrible Harold Barton was, he sheltered his children (imho) from things like sex and relationship and their mother figured they were too young to even really talk about anything like sex and finding love. So, her first introduction was with the man who did the orphanage’s laundry. He thought she was pretty and she was just terrified and unable to really find a niche in the home and so she looked for places to hide which is where he found her, hiding and he took advantage of her. When her and Barney managed to run, she tried to leave behind the icky feelings that came from what happened to her, but she was never able to really get rid of them.
Which leads to..
Claire’s first time was with Viktor, the son of the fortune teller at the circus. She was 15 years old and he was 17 and she didn’t love him. But after breaking up with a townie shortly before going on the road again, Viktor offered to take her to a party where they got drunk and slept together in the bedroom of some townie who they didn’t know and honestly, she loved it. Afterwards though, she quietly sobbed in the bathroom, mentally eviscerating herself for sleeping with someone she didn’t love because that meant that the laundry guy was right; she was a whore.
(of course we know that is a big ass lie)
After that, Claire got herself another boyfriend, this time a little older (which is very illegal) and focused on trying to ignore the overwhelming feelings of complete dirtiness that came from all her drinking and fucking. He was a townie and believed her when she said she was old enough. After a few weeks, she got sick of him and broke up. But then she realised that she was getting sick in the mornings shortly after and that was the first time Claire got pregnant. At 16, she couldn’t be a parent, she was hardly a functioning adult. But she didn’t want to have an abortion, she was raised in a religious orphanage and thought that it was wrong.
It didn’t matter though, the strain of training and the violence that she lived with in the circus caused her to miscarry and while she cried daily about it, there was a little part of her that was relieved that she didn’t have to figure out what to do anymore. Her relief lasted shortly though as she realized that with losing the baby, she gained a crippling sleeping problem that made her drink more and act out. She waited a bit to start dating again, she had heard that if you had sex after being pregnant (even if you had a miscarriage) you could risk getting pregnant again and she was too terrified of that.
Though after a few months of not sleeping unless she was piss drink, Claire went back to dating and sleeping around because the nightmares from when she was younger was scarier than the nightmares of getting pregnant. Her first “boyfriend” after her miscarriage was the Strongman of the circus. He was violent and reminded her of her father and she made sure that no matter how drunk she was, she took the birth control that she had stolen. She refused to end up like her mother: shackled to a man who abused her and her kids. After a few months, she broke it off with him. Sorta. He was not one to take no for an answer so Claire just ignored most of his advances and slept with a knife under the bed.
(Even if that didn’t protect her all the time)
After the circus and the relationships that destroyed her understanding of basic relationships, Claire would get drunk and sleep with whoever was nearby. Sometimes, she would sleep with her marks or people who employed her and she occasionally dealt with people who refused her saying no unless she held a gun to their heads. ( unfortunately, more than once she had incidents where she didn’t have a weapon to protect herself and despite her training there are people stronger than her it’s why she has so many scars on her body )
That was until she came across a situation where she felt she had fallen in love with a mark; sure he was wanted for a lot of things ( murder, thievery, being a turncoat, things that claire normally abhorred ) but he valued her opinions and made her feel wanted. Deciding to stay with him for a bit, she lived on the run with him and they decided they were going to start a family. But things weren’t as they seemed and shortly after she got pregnant - whoo boy did that do a huge damage on her mentality - he went missing. Too far along for an abortion, Claire was forced to carry the baby to term.
Throughout it all, she suffered mentally. Her body changed in a way she didn’t like, she was forced to go into hiding until after she went into labor, she was forced to deal with nightmares every night she was actually able to go to sleep. She wanted to drink, all the time, but she didn’t because she didn’t want to hurt the baby even if she didn’t want it. Claire tried to find him all the time but she couldn’t and by time she actually gave birth, she was severely depressed and ready to end her life.
Giving birth was the worst part of her life, she hated every second of the event and when she had given birth to the baby, she refused to hold the child. Everyone chalked it up to postpartum depression but Claire knew it was because this child wasn’t going to stay with her. She wasn’t going to risk giving the child up for adoption in a foster system - she had been a victim of it and she refused to do that to a child she didn’t want - but she knew she had to get rid of the kid.
She spent a year looking and after finding a family that wanted a child (after secretly watching them for that length of time) she left the baby with them, swearing to watch over the child to make sure it was loved and cared for and promising to leave money in their bank account every month to help them.
Not long after that, Claire was picked up by SHIELD and became an agent. During the beginning she was sent on honeypot missions (not that often but enough that Claire has developed a healthy hatred of trying to seduce someone and now just flirts really bad) and Claire hated every bit of it, and she eventually told her handlers that she refused to do those types of missions anymore because she felt uncomfortable using her body in such a way. Her first handler (before Coulson) didn’t care and told her that she was a weapon to be used how SHIELD wanted because she was a criminal who belonged in prison not working for the government.
Claire bucked it up and continued to do whatever mission that was sent her way. If a few of her missions lead to sexual harassment then she didn't complain. She knew her place - even if she argued with it. By time she finally decided that she had had enough, she was having hard time sleeping, nightmares and just hated working there, and so she decided to approach Fury and tell him to toss her in prison, at least there she had a chance to escape. When asked where all the negative emotions were coming from, Claire explained what was going on and Fury was not happy.
She got a brand new handler and life at SHIELD got a bit easier to deal with. But there was still some trauma that was not dealt with because even though she was forced to go to aSHIELD therapist, she refused to truly talk about why honeypot missions bugged her and so she didn’t really deal with it.
Which leads to..
Future relationships with Claire is so low maintenance (even if she does occasionally have problems where she cheats without meaning to) that she honestly just wants to cuddle and not discuss her past relations with her partner. When it comes to kids, oh god does she have problems. She wants them, she really does, but at the same time, she’s still haunted by the child she left behind. Any relationship she would have is a relationship built on trust and love and she’s terrified that finding out that she has a child, that finding out that her entire sexually history is tainted by dark heavy stuff that she’d rather just never explain will destroy any relationship.
If it ever came to discussing having kids, Claire would probably have an internal freak-out and then, after trying to ignore it for so long, Claire would explain her history of pregnancy and talk about it with them. If she ever got pregnant, she’d deal with it badly by talking with her partner and a lot of communication by hiding it in the beginning, she would be terrified that they’d leave if they found out (because last time she thought she had a forever relationship, it went badly). When it came out, she would be over consumed by feelings and in some situations (if she felt too confined) she might even leave. Eventually she’d just come out and explain that when she was younger she had a child, gave it up and has felt horrible about it for years. She knows that she can’t take it back and she really doesn’t want to, but she would still regret it.
Eventually after much therapy, she would learn that what happen wasn’t her fault and that she is better than what her past was. She would also learn (after taking parenting classes) how to be a better parent. Because while much of her trauma towards children settle deeply from what was done to her and how she reacted towards it, a lot of it still stems from the abuse that was done to her by her father. Honestly, relationships would be hard even if she wasn’t abused, because she would be terrified of ending up like her mother or ending up like her father and not trusting herself not to end up like either of them.
OTHER THINGS:
Claire struggles with insecurity due to the abuse she suffered. In a relationship, she struggles with feeling good enough for the other person and she also struggles with drinking during a relationship. She feels like she doesn’t deserve her partner and will show it by either attaching herself to the other person or distancing herself.
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