Archive of Our Own ^beta

(too late, too late, but we were too early)

Liam knows Theo is gone the second Theo’s eyes slip closed, but he still spends the next half minute staring at the silver-blooded mess of Theo’s slack mouth and chin just waiting, waiting for a heartbeat.

Scott came back after fifteen minutes, Liam just keeps thinking, over and over, but there’s a voice in his head that sounds a lot like Theo pointing out that Scott had been an alpha, and healing from physical injury, terrible as it may have been. But Theo—Monroe had pumped mercury into Theo’s veins and turned his body against itself, and that—that’s not the same thing. 

And besides: Theo had never been an alpha, much as he may have wanted to be before—before everything.

Not to mention, that same voice whispers: not to mention that Theo isn’t—wasn’t—a werewolf. Theo had said it himself that one time, curled over that motel room bathroom and nauseous from nightmares with Liam’s fingers on the back of his neck, I know I’m not a werewolf, like you told your mom, but. And then later—earlier, Liam thinks blankly, it was only a few hours ago—Theo had yanked Liam to a stop in the middle of the woods and told him to roar, told him I can’t and it won’t work and I’m not a werewolf. It’d never mattered to Liam but apparently it had mattered, and Liam—he can’t stop himself from falling sideways, the impact jarring his wrist as he reflexively catches himself, but he doesn’t care.

C’mon, beat, he thinks at Theo’s—at Theo’s sister’s heart—but that thought just draws him up short, his own breath freezing in his chest because—because...

I don’t want to be the reason that anyone else dies, Theo had said, and Liam—he wonders, helplessly and no matter how much he tries to push away the thought, what it must be like—what it must have been like—for Theo to walk around every day with that reminder beating steadily in his chest. I can’t be the reason anyone else dies, Theo had begged when Liam had tried to refuse to make his promise, and Liam can remember the way that Theo had smelled after Corey had dropped him off from their visit to Josh’s and Tracy’s graves, the way Theo’s heart—his sister’s heart—had beat underneath Liam’s hand holding two forks to Theo’s chest. Liam had jolted away from him when Theo had covered Liam’s fingers with his own, but he’d still spent the rest of the afternoon taking deep lungfuls of that scent, grief and regret and shame all there, but it’d been the hope that he’d been addicted to; it’d been the barest thread of warmth woven through Theo’s scent, making Liam a little dizzy.

And that’s why Theo had said—Liam knows that’s why Theo had said—I don’t want to be the reason that anyone else dies. 

And Liam gets it—he does, okay, he made Theo’s stupid promise, after all, but. But I don’t want to be the reason that anyone else dies, except now Liam is the reason that someone else died. He hadn’t wanted to be, had begged not to be, because two weeks ago Theo had told him, you want to kill someone? Actually kill someone? This is how you do it. Theo had told him, you run off half-cocked, pissed off, and Monroe is going to play you like a drum, only Liam hadn’t run off half-cocked, and he hadn’t run off pissed off, and he hadn’t done it because Theo had cupped his fingers around the back of Liam’s head and looked Liam in the eye, and asked him not to. 

But Theo had still died, and it’s still all Liam’s fault. Just like Monroe had said it would be.

C’mon, beat, he begs Theo’s—his sister’s—heart silently. C’mon, beat, he thinks, because it’s only been a few minutes and maybe Theo hadn’t been an alpha, or a werewolf, but he hadn’t been nothing. He hadn’t been one of the Dread Doctors’ failed experiments, no matter what Monroe may have said. Maybe he hadn’t been an alpha, or a werewolf, but he’d saved Alec, and who knows how many other people, and he’d done it while being haunted by nightmares, by memories, by—why are you here, Theo—the sound of his sister’s heart beating steadily in his own chest. 

“C’mon, beat,” Liam whispers, his body leaning forward without thought, one hand on Theo’s mercury-slicked face, one on his sternum over the heart—not Theo’s own—still and silent below his fingers, “C’mon, beat. C’mon, please. Please. Please.”

But the only movement he feels is Shohreh’s hand on his arm, pulling him away from Theo’s body and into her own, and the only sound he hears is Shohreh’s voice, telling him, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, Liam.”

(negotiating damages in the midst of a hurricane)

“I’m sorry, Liam,” Shohreh murmurs, and wraps her arms tighter around Liam’s shoulders cradled against her chest as he gives a wounded cry and starts to shake, salt and saline tinging the air. 

Over the top of his head she can see Theo’s death-slack face, his blood gone silver—mercury, Liam had frantically tried to explain after they’d pulled him from the wreck of Monroe’s car, dead and dying hunters strewn around them, she left him hooked up to an IV bag full of mercury, as little sense as that had made—and still dripping from Theo’s lips. It’s a horrifying sight. It’s not the last memory Shohreh wants to have of him, so she presses her cheek a little harder to the top of Liam’s head, closes her eyes.

She closes her eyes and remembers, because the first time she’d seen Theo it’d been in the background of a photo that Ailene had sent, the upstart young pack gone hunting hunters all arrayed around and unaware of the picture being taken. He’d been almost hidden by Argent, stood just off Argent’s shoulder, but Ailene had said, they have some kind of specialist with them, some half-werewolf, half-coyote kid, and Shohreh’s interest had been piqued. She’d looked at Theo in that first photo and thought: couldn’t be.

But she’d sent an envoy to the skinwalkers anyway, and the newest of their ranks—a fierce-eyed kitsune who’d smelled of ozone and steel—had confirmed for her envoy that, yes, their latest prisoner had been freed. So Shohreh had pulled Ailene’s photo back up, and stared at the McCall pack’s half-werewolf, half-coyote specialist, and then she’d picked up the phone, and called Talia Hale’s son. I have something for you, she’d told a near-stuttering Derek Hale, his anxious heartbeat audible even through the crappy quality of the call, but what she’d meant was: I think you have something for me.

But it’d turned out that the McCall pack had known who they were harboring. After Shohreh and the young Mr. McCall had finished their greetings, after the tension in the atmosphere had broken—Chemult and Ailene’s fool of a brother still clearly on their minds—Shohreh had looked at Theo and said, I must admit, you aren’t what I was expecting. And while every other member of the McCall pack had looked bewildered, Theo had just gone rigid, and then sheet-white, and then had bowed his head; had unintentionally—or intentionally; replaying that moment later Shohreh had been pretty sure it was intentionally—bared his throat. 

And that’d been unexpected, and interesting, but what had truly been unexpected, and interesting, was the way that the single young beta in McCall’s young pack had taken half a step in front of the Dread Doctors’ former right-hand. Almost immediately after they’d realized what she’d meant, every member of the McCall pack had fallen all over themselves to explain Theo’s presence, the skinwalkers’ prison and the Wild Hunt and the Anuk-ite set loose from Halwyn’s cage, and Shohreh had realized that that young beta—that Liam—hadn’t even known he’d moved.

“I’m so sorry, Liam,” She tells him again, and tightens her arms when he turns even further into her, when his shoulders start to shake even harder.

Behind her, footsteps, and Daniel comes to a stop a few respectful feet away. Somewhere out in the middle of State Highway 97 is a section of road strewn with the wreckage of cars and the wreckage of Monroe’s last stand, and somewhere out in the middle of the state are the other three members of the McCall pack frantically waiting for news of their two kidnapped pack members. Shohreh needs to call the older McCall to deal with the former and needs to call the younger McCall to update him on the status of the latter, and so she sighs, and braces herself, and then pulls away from Liam just enough that she can stroke a gentle hand down his face.

“Come call Scott with me,” She suggests softly; she’d considered making it an order, and a red-eyed one if necessary, but. 

But Liam just shakes his head, starts to open his mouth, and then clamps it closed again as his eyes spill back over. Shohreh studies him for a few seconds, and then she nods, and leans forward and kisses him gently on the forehead, and stands. Daniel moves to take her place without prompting, kneeling down next to Liam, but Liam hardly notices. His attention returns to Theo’s body, to the wreck of his silver-covered mouth and chin; he brings a hand up to clutch at the wrist of the grounding hand Daniel puts on his shoulder, but his eyes never waver from Theo’s chest; to the heart he keeps hoping will start to beat.

Shohreh watches the dully-lit tableau of them for a moment longer, and then she forces herself to turn away, pull out her phone as she walks past her people, out of the warehouse doors and into the dark of the night. The call to the older McCall is quick, clinical. She’d left a number of her betas with the wreckage, Liam’s voice in the air telling them that they had to hurry, that Theo’s forty minutes are up, confusing as that had been at the time, and so it’s a simple enough proposition to agree to have them wait for Agent McCall’s task force to arrive.

But the younger McCall.

“Shohreh, thank god,” Scott McCall blurts out the second he answers the phone. Shohreh can hear the sound of highway noise in the background, but an idling engine; Scott must have pulled over when he’d seen her name on his screen, “Did you find them? Are Liam and Theo okay?”

No, Shohreh wants to answer, Liam and Theo are not okay. But instead she just closes her eyes and exhales out quietly, presses the phone a little harder to her ear as she tells him, “Mr. Dunbar is safe.”

Two heaved-out breaths, then, one each for Scott and for Malia with him in the car, apparently, but it doesn’t take long for Scott to catch her wording. His heaved-out breath freezes, and there’s a pregnant pause before Scott says, hesitant because he knows—he must know—what she hadn’t said: “Shohreh…Theo. What about…?”

And so Shohreh opens her eyes back up, and stares out into the now-quiet night, the too-late quiet night, and tells him, “Mr. Rae—Theo. Theo is dead.”

There’s nothing, for a long few seconds, not even the sound of Scott breathing. And then Scott’s held breath stutters loose of his lungs, and Shohreh has to close her eyes again against the burn of grief in their corners as Scott stammers, “What?”

(followed your footsteps but you were still gone)

“What?” Scott stammers, his eyes fixed sightlessly out the windshield, not even the sight of Malia’s hands coming up to cover her mouth or Chris hurrying back towards the parked Jeep from his equally-haphazardly-parked SUV enough to pull his attention away, because: what?

But Shohreh just says again, implacably if regretfully, “Theo is dead,” and Scott has to bring his phone away from his ear, press the back of the palm still clutching it against his mouth as grief slams into him like a freight train.

Theo is dead, but Scott had seen him just that morning, one hand on Liam’s head as he’d pushed Liam’s mugging face out of the tablet camera so that he could finish his conversation with Chris. Theo is dead but he’d been working his way through a vaccine production schedule that he and Lydia had worked out, his smile easier and the dark circles under his eyes less pronounced, obvious even with the way that he’d kept getting distracted by Liam as the video call had gone on, had kept looking up and out towards wherever Liam had been, whatever Liam had been doing. 

Theo is dead.

“What—what happened? ” Scott finally manages, bringing his phone back to his mouth; beside him in the Jeep, Malia makes a small noise and turns her face towards the window, but he can still smell salt in the air.

“Monroe poisoned him,” Shohreh says, and before Scott can protest but the vaccine, she clarifies, “Mercury. Liam said she used mercury.”

Mercury. Mercury for chimeras, mercury for failures, and for a moment Scott wonders how Monroe could possibly have known before realizing: Gerard must have told her. And god damn, but even in death that old bastard’s ghost is still haunting Scott’s pack. Scott shudders out an exhale, the air of the Jeep cab feeling stale, thin; suffocating.

“I don’t understand,” He tells Shohreh, voice croaking, “Why would she...? Did Liam escape?”

“No, she—” Shohreh starts to explain, then hesitates before continuing, “Scott. Monroe is dead.” 

And for a moment that overtakes everything, a brief shining realization that it’s over, but the vicious flare of satisfaction Scott instantly feels gets tangled up with the grief climbing over and around his ribs like vines over a trellis, and his next breath trips over itself. But luckily Shohreh keeps going: 

“We intercepted Monroe and her people. They had Liam with them. She’d told him—” She hesitates again, then exhales quietly and says, “Monroe told Liam that she was keeping him for leverage, but that Theo—”

“—wasn’t part of my pack,” Scott finishes for her, and even the knee-jerk panic that he’d interrupted her, that he’d interrupted Shohreh, who apparently terrified Derek in the best sort of schoolteacher way, can’t puncture the swell of sudden guilt in his chest, because he’d never told Theo otherwise.

Before that first awful night in Chemult, Theo had pulled him aside as they’d been leaving that diner and warned him, they’re going to know that I’m not a member of your pack. And Scott had asked, does that matter, and Theo had looked at him like he was an idiot, but it hadn’t mattered, not to Scott. At first it’d just been naïveté, maybe, the same diplomatic flat-footedness that’d nearly gotten them all killed with Quentin and Ailene, but after that—after that it’d been because it hadn’t been true. 

But Scott had never told Theo otherwise. 

Why didn’t I tell him otherwise? Scott wonders, and can’t help the way that his body hunches over itself, his free arm folding down to cover the vulnerable parts of himself as he rests his forehead on the steering wheel and squeezes his eyes shut, his phone growing hot against his ear. Why hadn’t he told Theo otherwise, but it’d been obvious, hadn’t it? 

Except...except maybe it hadn’t been, Theo sat staring blankly at Scott that night nearly two weeks ago after Liam’s close call with the hunters, why do you think I always brought him here after he and I fought. Scott had thought Theo had known. He’d thought, even in the Jeep on the way back with Liam pissed off and silent in the passenger seat, Theo must be getting so irritated with this, with Scott always bringing Liam to him; with Scott always using Theo like a crutch, an anthropomorphic decoder ring to all Liam’s moods, his temper. 

Except Theo had just looked bewildered and said, so are you going to tell me, and Scott had said, I don’t think I should. Scott had said, I think you need to figure it out for yourself. And he’d meant that, the way that Scott yelling at Liam just made Liam angrier, but Theo yelling at Liam just made him see sense. He’d meant that, the way that Theo never slept, Malia on the phone saying I don’t know, maybe two hours, the last few nights, except when he and Liam had to share the world’s most uncomfortable air mattress. He’d meant that.

He hadn’t meant this. 

“Scott,” He suddenly hears, and Scott jerks and stares wide-eyed at Chris now stood in the Jeep’s open doorway, his expression somber as he orders gently, “Scott, give me the phone.”

(hunting for a way to say i never meant like this )

“Scott, give me the phone,” Argent gently orders, his eyes on the trails of wetness cutting glistening tracks down Scott’s cheeks.

He holds out his palm, but Scott just stares at him, his expression twisted up and raw, and so Argent leans over, takes hold of Scott’s phone where he’s still holding it against his ear and slides it out of his hand. Scott jerks after it leaves his fingers like he was maybe going to try and take it back, some unconscious superstition, maybe: that if he didn’t let it go, then maybe the message it’d helped deliver wasn’t over yet, that maybe there was still time. Argent brings his other hand up to squeeze Scott’s shoulder, but then he turns away.

He sees it in the side mirror, though, when Scott turns to Malia—when they turn to each other—and Malia surges into Scott’s chest, when Scott buries his face in her hair.

“Shohreh,” He greets, respectfully but quickly, and then he sucks in a deep breath and braces himself, because he’d known, the second he’d seen Scott’s face crumple through the windshield. And so he asks quietly: “Who?”

“Theo,” Shohreh answers just as softly, and Argent can’t help squeezing his eyes shut, bringing up a hand to briefly cover them as they burn; as his mouth twists in a pained grimace.

Then he clears his throat and drops his hand, forces his expression back neutral as he murmurs, “And Liam?”

“He’s...safe,” Shohreh answers, conspicuously not saying he’s okay, and Argent—Argent is sure he isn’t. 

When Scott had first said, Liam has to go back to Dorris—stood off to the side after the disaster that’d been the confrontation with Rossler and Preston and watching the slow, agonizing process of Liam healing—Argent had nearly argued. He’d nearly argued because what Scott had meant was, Liam has to go back to Theo, and Argent had admired the solemn practicality of it, aware just as Scott had been of the way that Liam and Theo anchored each other. But. But in the right set of hands that strength could be a weakness. Hands like his father’s, hands like Monroe’s. Hands like his own, attached to a mind that could never stop itself from seeing the way Liam and Theo had reacted to each other and thinking: that could be useful. 

All those old instincts—all those relics of his old life—still there under the surface. 

The thought sets his already cramping chest to cramping harder and so he shoves it aside, refocuses on Shohreh as she continues, “Monroe told Liam that she was keeping him for—”

“—leverage,” Argent finishes for her, sure of it, because that’d been one of his father’s favorite moves—do you have any concept of what the bond between an alpha and his beta is like, said to his hunter trainees with a curl to his mouth that Argent can recognize in hindsight as cruelty—and Gerard would have, of course, passed it on to his protégée. 

He exhales harshly again, tries to concentrate on the sound of traffic still passing them by on the highway so that he doesn’t have to concentrate on the sound of Scott and Malia’s quiet grief, still audible through the open Jeep door. Closing his eyes, Argent thinks, in for three, out for three, the same steady mantra he’d breathed to Allison as she’d breathed through one bullseye after the other. It doesn’t help, exactly, but that old familiar wound throbs. A reminder that this one would become just like it; that it would fade to that same dull ache someday, too.

“Monroe?” Argent finally manages, and if his voice is rougher than usual, Shohreh doesn’t mention it. 

“Dead,” Shohreh answers simply, and the brief, vicious flare of satisfaction Argent feels calcifies almost instantly, gone hard with the memory of Liam leaning over the back of Theo’s chair that morning in the Dorris house kitchen, Liam grinning and waving goodbye as Theo gave a sloppy salute; as Theo had said see you later, then. Argent closes his eyes against the burn of it, opens them up just as Shohreh adds, “Rossler, Preston, and Richmond, too, at least. We’ll have to wait for Agent McCall’s team for the full count. We had to—leave in a hurry, once we’d found Liam.”

Argent realizes what she means—that they’d had to leave in a hurry to try and get back to Theo in time—and finds himself nodding, then mentally chides himself for the lapse and says aloud, “Thank you, Shohreh. For—for finding him. Finding them.”

“Chris—” Shohreh murmurs gently—too gently—then hesitates, makes a quiet noise that Argent can’t interpret over the phone and then apparently decides against whatever she was initially going to say; Argent swallows, “We’ll take Liam and—and Theo back to Yreka.”

“Okay,” Argent agrees, and snarls at himself when he voice hitches, reigns in his slipping control as he clears his throat and tells her, more smoothly, “We’re still a few hours out, but we’ll—we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Alright,” Shohreh says, and starts to add, “Chris, I—,” and so Argent gives himself one thing—one selfish thing—and lets himself hang up before she can finish. 

(the truth as a shield or the truth as a weapon)

“Chris, I—” Shohreh tries, but her phone beeps twice to signal the end of the call, and she closes her eyes, sighs.

She doesn’t want to go back inside. The thought hits her instantly, a little petulantly, but it’s true; she does not, in fact, want to go back inside, the space filled with the scent of Liam’s grief and the scent of Theo’s death, tangled together and all the worse for it. Outside the air smells of exhaust and chemicals and the humid undercurrent of too many human bodies packed too closely together from the city nearby, but it also smells of ozone, and pine, and the sharp chill of the settling winter; Shohreh gives herself two more deep, even breaths, and then she forces herself to move.

When she steps back inside with the heavy wool blanket she’d retrieved from her trunk in her hands, Tatiana makes an aborted move forward, like she’d been about to take it, but Shohreh shakes her head. Back in the main room Daniel is still on his knees with Liam, who’s still exactly where he’d been when she’d left; his eyes fixed on exactly the same place. Shohreh lets her eyes drift to Theo’s still chest, too, but only for a moment, and then she finishes coming forward and sets the blanket down by Theo’s feet, starts to unfold it.

That snaps Liam out of it, and he jerks forward; Daniel’s comforting hand on his shoulder turns into a restraint as Liam demands, “Wait, what are you—?”

Shohreh drops the blanket and gives Daniel a look, catches Liam when Daniel immediately releases him. Liam barely seems to notice her arm across the front of his shoulders, just strains against it, his eyes flicking from the blanket to Theo’s body and then back up to Shohreh’s face.

“No,” He protests shakily, then more strongly: “No. Not yet, Shohreh—please.”

But Shohreh just nods to Daniel over Liam’s head, tightens her grip when Liam tries to fight out of her hold as Daniel stands and circles them to get to the blanket instead, finishes unfolding it. 

“Liam. Liam,” Shohreh tells him, then gives up and puts a hand on his face to physically turn it when he won’t look at her, “Scott, Chris, and Malia are on their way to Yreka. It’s time.”

Over her shoulder she can hear Daniel as he shifts, as he leans over the now-unfolded blanket to slide his arms underneath Theo’s body. And even if she couldn’t, Liam makes a punched-out, desperate noise and all but lunges forward, like he was going to physically stop Daniel from lifting Theo’s body onto the wool. But Shohreh holds him still, and has to engage some of her supernatural strength to do it; Liam unthinkingly engaging his own supernatural strength to try and push past her. 

The sound he makes reopens the still raw wound inside her chest, the one that’d split wide when Liam’s howl had split the air earlier that day, panicked and scared and cut-off, abruptly, even as Shohreh’s head had snapped up, her eyes flaring reflexively. So she wraps her arms more securely around Liam’s shoulders, the back of his head, presses the side of her face to the mess of his sweat-matted hair as she holds him steady; as he presses unconsciously back even as he stares fixedly at Daniel now wrapping the blanket over Theo’s body and slack face; as it disappears from view. 

“I’m sorry,” She whispers to Liam again, her throat still feeling raw from her own howl, her own order to her people just after Liam’s had stopped: go, go find them. From her call to Scott and Chris and Malia, no answers to their frantic questions, just her pledge that her pack was searching, that they wouldn’t stop. 

That they’d do everything in their power to bring Liam and Theo back alive, but no well-intentioned, heartfelt vows made, because Shohreh knew better than to promise something she didn’t know if she could give. And I couldn’t, she thinks, and digs her fingers a little harder into Liam’s skull, his back, trying to ground him as Daniel stands, Theo’s wrapped body in his arms, and Liam gives a wounded moan and turns into her.

She spends the ride back to Yreka with Liam’s head in her lap, Tatiana driving with her hands tight enough around the steering wheel that the leather creaks. At first Liam had tried to ride with Daniel—with Daniel and Theo’s wrapped body—in Shohreh’s SUV, but Shohreh had shaken her head, had given in and flared her eyes when he’d tried to fight her on it. Liam had lasted approximately five seconds under her implacable stare, and then his snarl had crumpled into a raw, aching expression, and he’d followed her into Tatiana’s backseat, had folded over almost instantly and buried his face against her thigh, had just started to shake with near-silent grief.

She loses track of him when they get back to the ranch house, her pack returning and goodnaturedly if overwhelmingly sympathetic, Liam’s shoulders hunching in further and further on the couch where Shohreh had sat him when they’d arrived as they try to offer what comfort they can. Originally she had stayed with him, one hand on his back as he’d buried his face in his hands, but there’d been too much to do, and eventually she’d stood, walked away from him so he wouldn’t have to overhear her quietly retelling his and Theo’s story, over and over again. All she knows is that when she looks up from another phone call, this one from Lakeview and on the heels of another check-in from Agent McCall, Liam is gone from the living room, and from the staleness of his scent, has been for a while. 

But Shohreh—she doesn’t have to guess where he is. When she stops in the doorway of the bedroom where Daniel had placed Theo’s body—the same bedroom that Theo had always used, back when Theo would do her the favor of pretending to sleep—Liam is there, sat on the floor with his back pressed against the far wall, his elbows on his knees and his hands dangling loosely between them. He glances quickly at and then away from her when she appears in the doorway, his throat bobbing as he swallows.

Shohreh exhales quietly and leans her head against the door jamb, but Liam beats her to opening her mouth, his voice a low rasp as he tells her, “You don’t have to say it.”

(the nothingness that was before you started)

“You don’t have to say it,” Liam tells Shohreh, and as soft as her sympathetic stare is, it still feels like it’s scratching raw over his skin, his whole body like an exposed nerve, “I know this isn’t—I know it’s not helping.”

And it’s not; Liam knows it’s not. Back in the living room amid the well-meaning chaos of the Yreka pack, surrounded by living, breathing bodies, and scents, and noise, Liam had been able to forget, even if only for half-seconds at time, Theo’s scent gone too sharp with the heavy metals pumped into his veins and Theo’s body gone too silent with his sister’s heart quiet in his chest. But that’d only made remembering worse, a constant cyclic gut-punch followed by a yawning hollow, and eventually Liam had given up, had slipped away when he’d been sure Shohreh had been distracted enough and followed the too-sharp, metallic bite of Theo’s poisoned scent in here. 

He’d made his first mistake—well, his second; his first was coming in here at all—early, when he’d given into the clawing urge in his chest and hesitantly approached the bed, had slowly reached forward and pulled back the corner of the blanket covering Theo’s face. Out of the dim lighting of the warehouse and in the soft light of the shaded lamp on the nightstand, the silvered blood dried tacky over Theo’s mouth and chin had glimmered, dully, and Liam had had to brace a hand on the mattress as he’d folded nearly in half, half-turned away and the back of one hand pressed to his mouth as he fought not to get sick. Then he’d thought—instantly and unwillingly—no Theo now to take the nausea, and Liam had stumbled back against the wall, hit it hard enough to jar his teeth, and slid down until he was sat, same as he is now.

He forces himself to look up at Shohreh when she doesn’t respond immediately, just continues to study him from her place against the door. She searches his face for a long moment, and then she straightens from the door jamb, comes forward enough that she can pull the blanket back over Theo’s face, smooth it flat with careful fingers. Then she hesitates, and Liam’s expecting her to say something then, but all she does is round the bed, join him on the opposite side and put her back against the wall, slide down it until she’s sitting next to him, her legs pulled up to her chest to mirror his posture.

It’s worse than if she’d yelled, or even if she’d tried for sympathy; Liam feels his eyes burn and his expression spasm and he brings his hands up, covers his face as he feels wetness spill back over his cheeks. Shohreh doesn’t move to put a hand on his arm or pull him into her like she had before; she just sits, close enough that he can feel her warmth; close enough that he can hear her heartbeat, the sound helping to fill the room that had been eerily, accusingly silent until then.

And maybe it’s that, that quiet burn of understanding, that lets Liam choke out through his fingers, “He would have lived if I’d just told her.”

Because he’d done the math during the long, endless hour in the car back to Yreka, his face hidden against Shohreh’s leg and her hand stroking over his hair. Forty minutes, Monroe had said. Forty minutes until Theo’s body would no longer be able to heal itself from the mercury she’d pumped into his veins, and less than that had passed when she’d looked at Liam and said, tell me where to find the operating theater, and I promise I’ll take the IV out. And Theo had made him promise not to, and so he hadn’t, but if he had…

Monroe had been wearing a watch when she’d gripped his chin tightly in hand and made him look as Richmond opened the valve controlling the flow of mercury into Theo’s veins wide. And after Shohreh’s pack had found and rescued him, Liam had stared at the dashboard clock in Shorheh’s SUV as he’d begged her to hurry, and so he’d known: twenty minutes. That’s how much time had passed since Monroe had pulled him from the warehouse. Tell me where to find the operating theater, and I promise I’ll take the IV out, Monroe had said, and then she’d murmured: he’ll be in bad shape but he’ll still be alive when the Yreka pack finds him. And he would have been. Theo would have lived.

If Liam had just told her.

“You don’t know that that’s true,” Shohreh counters gently.

But Liam just feels the yawning hollow in his chest twist wider, pressed up against the inside of his ribs as he lets his hands drop, his head tilt back against the wall as he replies dully, “You don’t know that it isn’t.”

Shohreh just looks at him, and Liam’s half-expecting another red-eyed order to get up, to come back out with her to the living room. He’s in the middle of debating whether and how hard he’s going to fight her on it, when instead she closes her eyes, briefly and with pain obvious in their corners, and then she brings up an arm, wraps it around his shoulders, and pulls him in. Squeezing his own eyes shut, Liam lets himself slump against her, his face hidden in her neck as she wraps her arm up and around his head, her fingers like anchor-points against his scalp and her mouth pressed gently against his opposite temple. 

And Liam can’t help it—he starts to shake again, his eyes helplessly locking back on the bed; on Theo’s wrapped body on top of it. He shakes, his breaths hitching again and again—just like Theo’s had when he’d been staring up at Liam and trying to breathe past the mercury bubbling over his lips—his hands coming up to clutch at Shohreh’s arm wrapped around him; the only thing, it feels like, keeping him from shaking apart.

And so that’s how Scott, and Argent, and Malia find him some time later, McPherson behind them in the doorway. Liam freezes, his eyes locked on them, but even though they each start out looking back, they all—Malia first and then Scott and then Argent—all wind up turning to helplessly look at Theo’s body on the bed instead. Scott shudders out an exhale, his body bowing and his scent snarling up. Argent brings a hand up to cover his mouth, but Liam can still see the corners of eyes tighten, his brows pull together in grief.

But it’s Malia whose jaw clenches, who steps determinedly forward—ignoring Scott jolting to stare concerned at her back—until she’s standing next to the bed. It’s Malia who reaches forward, just like Liam had earlier, and pulls the blanket back just enough to see Theo’s face, silver blood still coating his mouth and chin. And it’s Malia’s whose eyes go blue, whose hands curl into clawed fists, the scent of fresh blood gone sharp in the air.

Scott starts to jerk forward towards her, but he jerks to an equally unsteady stop when Liam—his mouth opening before he can stop himself, the words piling up behind his teeth and then breaking through—gasps out, “I’m sorry, Malia. I’m so sorry.”

But Malia just turns to look at him, her blue-eyed stare gone narrow as she demands, “What?”

(amongst the trees, amongst my freedom)

“What?” Malia demands, fury and grief and her mouthful of fangs adding edges to the word that she hadn’t meant. 

Liam just stares at her, every one of his hitching breathes like small stings in her ears, and then he glances briefly at Shohreh and pushes himself out of her arms and onto his feet, his whole body hunched like a man stepping up to a firing squad. When he manages to drag his gaze back up to hers, his eyes are bleeding gold, but his teeth are human-blunt when he opens his mouth to speak, when he opens his mouth to say:

“Monroe only attacked after you and I traded places. Maybe if—” Liam stops, has to turn away as he apparently tries to swallow past a tight throat, but he makes the mistake of looking at the bed, and his expression just collapses in on itself. Still, he manages to choke out, “Maybe if you’d still been there…”

Behind her, Malia can hear Scott suck in a sharp breath, and Scott’s the alpha, and her boyfriend, and already so full of directionless guilt and regret and grief, and she knows that she should let him speak, but she can’t stop herself from moving, already rounding the bed as she snaps, “Don’t be an idiot.” Liam starts to recoil, surprise and pain all over his face, but Malia just barrels right into him, pulls him in tight as she repeats, whispering it fiercely in his ear: “Don’t be an idiot.”

Except—except it’s not just sympathy and the tug of pack roughening her words, or tightening her arms around Liam’s shoulders as he brings his hands up and clings just as tightly to her: it’s guilt. It’s guilt because: maybe if you’d still been there. Because that’d been the first thing Malia had thought after she’d overheard Shohreh tell Scott that Theo was dead. Maybe if Liam hadn’t screwed up and gotten himself reassigned. Maybe if Malia had still been there watching Theo’s back. 

Maybe if.

And Malia had known it was bullshit the second she’d thought it, had shoved the insidious whisper of an accusation away as hard and fast as she could, the burn of it only making the grief worse, the tightness in her throat worse, stuck in the Jeep with Scott as he’d stuttered out I don’t understand, because he hadn’t wanted to believe. And now, Liam, the skin of his cheek pressed against hers smelling of Theo’s poisoned blood, because it’d been all over—is still all over—Liam’s hands, and he had, apparently, touched his face. Malia presses her cheek harder against Liam’s, her eyes squeezing shut.

Eventually Shohreh shepherds them all out of the room, away from Theo’s body still smelling disconcertingly normal, only the barest threads of death starting to weave their way through it. Argent almost immediately breaks off—after yanking Liam into a too-tight, too-quick embrace—to talk to Shohreh, McPherson, and another handful of Shohreh’s betas, and Malia can hear him mutter the hunter family with the false tip with a particular burr of violence from her place on the couch. 

Scott and Liam, though.

At first she’d tried to take Liam with her to the couch, get him sat down on the farthest edge from the bedroom where Theo’s body lay, but Scott had stopped her, had gently pulled Liam away. Malia had watched initially, more out of exhausted curiosity than anything else, but she’d quickly had to look away; Liam’s eyes had bled gold and Scott’s had gone red in an aching sort of synchronicity, and then Scott had pulled Liam in and just held him steady. He’d pressed his face against Liam’s shoulder, but Malia could still hear him whispering I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, over and over again; had known it’d been meant both as a comfort and a confession; Scott already adding the weight of Theo’s death to that already on his shoulders.

But after awhile Scott leads Liam over to the couch and over to her, encourages him to sit with a wobbly smile and then goes to join Argent and Shohreh still trying to figure out how to clean up Monroe’s mess; trying to figure out what to do next. And Malia—Malia gets a good look at Liam gone hunched over with his face held in his hands, his elbows braced on his knees, and she does the only thing she can think of: she shivers loose of her clothes right there on the couch, propriety and Theo’s constant bitching about decency be damned, and noses her now-canine muzzle in between the bend of Liam’s near arm, keeps pressing insistently forward until Liam straightens up just enough to stare at her in confusion. But then his expression crumples and he folds over her, buries his face in the fur of her back as she pushes forward until she’s half in his lap.

She’d done the exact same thing to Theo, back in the Dorris house that long, long week that Shohreh had spent digging through Theo’s memories looking for clues on how to recreate the vaccine. He’d rarely slept anyway, much as he tried to convince her that he did, but those nights it’d been worse than hearing his gasping nightmares and rabbiting heartbeat from the other room, or smelling the all-pervasive scent of guilt that would saturate his scent. 

Those nights when they were recreating the vaccine he’d come awake silently, mouth locked in a wide, eerily soundless cry, his whole body convulsing, right up until the point where he’d suck in a huge, painful breath and scramble up from the couch for the bathroom, where he’d spend the rest of the night curled over the toilet and getting sick in repeated, unpredictable intervals. 

That first night both Shohreh—staying in Malia’s room—and McPherson—staying in Theo’s—had come out, both startled awake. But Theo had locked the door, had braced himself back against it when Shohreh had broken the lock and tried to force her way past it anyway, repeating I’m fine, it’s fine, over and over until Shohreh—glancing first at McPherson and then over at Malia, stood in the hallway and silently watching—had given up and quietly said, okay, Mr. Raeken.

The second night had been the same, minus Shohreh’s attempted intervention—and setting aside her initial refusal that morning to keep searching Theo’s memories, which Theo had overridden with sheer, bloody, and Liam-esque levels of stubbornness—but the third night, Malia hadn’t been able to take it. The instant he’d thrown himself off the couch and gone stumbling for the bathroom, she’d shaken herself loose of her clothes into her full-shift form and darted after him, and slipped inside with him before he could close the door all the way. Initially Theo had just stared at her, sat on her haunches in front of the closed door and unapologetically meeting his eyes, and then he’d gone sheet-white and had to bend over the toilet as he’d gotten sick. 

He’d groaned and tried to push her off when she’d crowded close, but it hadn’t taken long—his fingers landing on and then tightening in her fur—for him to start pulling instead of pushing, for him to turn and bury his hot, clammy face against her side. She’d spent the rest of the night with him like that, had eventually wound up laying on the threadbare bath mat with Theo after he’d given in and collapsed onto the floor, his face hidden against the fur at the back of her neck and his hand clutching at the fur over her side as he’d shaken, and shaken, and shaken.

Just like Liam is now, folded over and around her on a couch in Shohreh’s living room, Theo’s still and silent body in a bedroom down the hall, Liam’s fingers clenching and releasing in her fur as he shakes, and shakes, and shakes, too.

She loses track of time, curled into the curve of Liam’s body and surrounded by the sound, and smell, and feel of his grief, but eventually Liam’s shuddering limbs start to settle, and she realizes he’s fallen into an exhausted sleep when his grip slackens and he slumps slowly to the side, coming to rest between her bracing body and the back of the couch. Raising her head, she looks over and back at him, and then she whines, low and lupine, and carefully wriggles around until she’s facing the same way he is; until she’s pressed up against him, his sleep-slow breath ruffling the fur at the side of her neck. 

And it’s there, laying like that, Malia’s own eyes starting to grow heavy, that she overhears Scott murmur, “I don’t know, Chris. Don’t you think we should wait?”

(watching time run backwards in a bathroom mirror)

“I don’t know, Chris. Don’t you think we should wait?” Scott mumbles, and rubs tired fingers over his tired face, his chest one snarled mess from his senses still anchored one thread to Liam’s grief-soaked scent, his slowing heartbeat, and one thread to the bitter scent of Theo’s body, the gut-punched absence of where his pulse should be.

He’d finally collapsed into a chair at Shohreh’s massive dining room table, midway through Chris’s and Shohreh’s and McPherson’s quiet discussion of what to do next; of how to declare victory when none of them had expected it, and maybe now—given the consequences—no longer wanted it. Chris had handled most of it, and Scott had been simultaneously ashamed of himself and desperately, pathetically grateful, his head feeling like it’d been stuffed full of cotton and his body reflexively flinching every time he’d caught one of Liam’s quiet, mournful sounds. As it is he’d still jerked hard enough when Malia had shifted to comfort Liam in her own, unique way, that his elbow had slid off the table and he’d nearly concussed himself with his bracing arm; he’d been pathetically grateful when Chris and Shohreh and the others had ignored that, too.

But now Chris just looks at him, and it’s not quite sympathy in his eyes but it’s something, and he counters softly, “Waiting isn’t going to change anything, or make it any easier. I know why you—” He hesitates, then sighs and continues, “I know why you didn’t want to do it before we got here, and you saw…” 

Scott flushes and jerks his gaze away from Chris’s, mouth twisting at having been so transparent, but Chris just quietly concludes:

“It’s time, Scott. You’ve got to tell them.”

Scott almost argues, but he’d made the mistake when he’d looked away of looking over towards the living room, and now he can’t stop staring at Malia and Liam on the couch; of Liam finally passed-out exhausted against the back and hidden—not accidentally—from the rest of the room by the bulk of Malia’s canine body. Malia raises her head as she senses his attention and whines, low and near sub-vocal, when she catches Scott’s eyes; Scott would never have heard it without his supernatural hearing, and that realization—sticks, small but barbed inside his chest.

“You’re right,” Scott finds himself admitting as he holds her gaze, blinks rapidly a few times when Malia drops her head back down and shifts more fully against Liam. His voice had croaked when he’d spoken so he clears his throat, says again, “You’re right.” He stops, glances uncertainly between Chris and Shohreh, “Do you…?”

“Go,” Shohreh gently orders, “We won’t make any decisions before you get back.”

Scott nods gratefully and forces himself to his feet. He spends a few seconds hesitating by the edge of the table—Chris and Shohreh and the others politely pretending not to notice—before he makes up his mind and heads for the door leading to Shohreh’s massive back porch, slips outside as quietly as he can. It’s cold and dark and near-silent, the sounds and smells of the postage-stamp of Yreka lit-up and vibrant in the distance too far away to reach them, and Scott spends a few long minutes just staring out into the horizon before he exhales roughly, pulls his phone out of his pocket, and makes the first call.

“Scott?” Derek’s voice is sleep-rough and burring, but heading rapidly towards alert; Scott had whiplashed everyone in Beacon Hills between panic and relief just a few short hours ago, and it shows in the way Scott can practically hear Derek forcing himself awake and prepared. Scott inhales and braces himself to force the truth past his numb lips, but Derek speaks again before he can: “Hold on, Stiles is here—let me put you on speaker.”

“No, wait—” Scott starts to say before he can stop himself, because Stiles had been the one to call several annoyed, determined times after Scott had texted everyone in Beacon Hills, unsatisfied with Scott’s it’s over, Shohreh found them. Details later. 

And Scott had known it was a shitty thing to do when he’d done it, the side-stepping of the truth he’d done, but he just—couldn’t, not right then, and not every time his phone had rang for the handful of calls Stiles had attempted before Malia—watching Scott from the passenger side of the Jeep—had texted Stiles and told him: stop. Scott hadn’t been able to look at her, after, but he had reached out and taken her hand. 

Now, he closes his eyes in a preemptive wince as Stiles squawks, “Scotty! Jesus, finally. Now will you—?”

“Monroe is dead,” Scott blurts out, interrupting him, the words tripping off his tongue before he’d meant them to. 

There’s a few seconds of stunned silence on the line, and then Stiles whoops, the line crackling with electronic distortion at the sudden burst of sound, before he says, “Oh my god, that’s—! Derek, did you hear? The Wicked Witch—”

Except Derek cuts him off, orders, “Stiles, shut up,” in a harsh tone, and Scott covers his face with his free hand in the resulting startled quiet, Scott immediately and with conviction realizing that Derek knows as he asks, “Scott. Liam and Theo…?”

Scott can hear it when Stiles sucks in a sharp breath as he realizes, and the sound tears through him, roughens his voice as he answers, “Liam is okay.”

As soon as he says it he winces, because what he’d meant was that Liam is alive. What Liam isn’t is okay, and all three of them know how rarely alive and okay actually mean the same thing. Derek seems to recognize his meaning, because he hesitates a beat, two, and then gently presses:

“And Theo?”

Scott starts shaking his head before he realizes how useless it is with Stiles and Derek several hundred miles away, and he stops, forces himself to choke out, “Monroe, uh. Monroe poisoned… Mercury,” He answers before Stiles can demand an answer to the same question that Scott had demanded of Shohreh earlier, “She was trying to get information out of him and Liam, and she used…used mercury to do it.”

Oh my god, Scott can hear Stiles breathe, the same words he’d said half a minute earlier, but this time stunned, shocky. Derek doesn’t say anything, which is the reason why Scott had decided—the steadfast certainty of his decision to do so coming from some low pit in his stomach—to call Derek first. Scott will never admit to it and Derek will never ask him to, but Scott had thought in this moment of perfect clarity, Derek knows what it’s like to lose betas, and that’d been it; he’d put his thumb to Derek’s name on his phone the next instant. 

And that—that’s why Derek isn’t saying anything: because he knows better than most that there isn’t anything to say.

But as understanding as Derek’s silence is—tempered some by the chaotic collection of background noise as Stiles’ default momentum kicks in and he starts to fidget, directionless and restless as he tries to process Scott’s revelation—it starts to scrape at Scott, so he clears his throat and says, as authoritatively as possible, “We, um. We’ll be heading back soon. We’ve got to figure out—” 

What to do with Theo’s body, he’d been about to say, a startling and horrifying realization that he doesn’t have an answer to, but Derek interrupts him.

“Call Lydia,” Derek cuts in, and then, when Scott doesn’t immediately respond, his brain struggling to switch tracks away from the stunned realization that Scott and his pack—that Liam—had been the closest thing Theo had to family, to friends, Derek clarifies, “Scott, you have to call Lydia. She and Theo—” 

He trails off, and there’s a crackling of sound in the background, like Derek had shifted to put a hand on the back of Stiles’ neck, or twisted around to put his feet on the floor.

“They spent a lot of time working on the vaccine together,” Derek finally finishes, the words low and ending on a sigh, “I don’t know what order you were planning on calling everyone, but…”

“I’ll call her next,” Scott promises, his stomach already twisting itself into knots at the thought.

“And I’ll start…figuring something out here,” Derek offers quietly, and it takes Scott a second to understand what he means; to understand that Derek had realized the same thing that Scott had: that one of them or all of them or someone was going to have bury Theo. 

Scott squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to say, “Okay,” and, “Thanks,” and then when that’s done, to hang up after Derek does, after Derek’s quiet I’m sorry, Scott, breathed so softly that he almost misses it underneath the sterile beep-beep of the call ending. Stood outside on the porch in the sudden silence Scott can hear the slight breeze through the trees, and inside he can hear Chris and Shohreh and McPherson still talking; can hear Liam and Malia breathing sleep-slow and quiet.

And, underneath all those things, he can hear, somehow—it’s absence real and damning and a physical presence—the yawning blank of where Theo’s heartbeat should be.

Lydia answers on the second ring, when Scott finally forces himself to call. She answers on the second ring and there’s a brittle edge to the way she demands, “Scott?”

(holiday survival tips from the heir apparent)

“Scott?” Lydia demands, her phone squeezed tightly enough in her hand that the silicone ridges of the anti-slip strips on its case are digging into her palm.

Her voice echoes strangely in the guest bedroom of her father’s house, too loud for the glossy, magazine-spread perfection of the designer bedspread and meticulously framed art on the walls. Lydia knows her father calls this her room, and she’s spent many carefully-calculated hours in it since her parent’s divorce, but she still stands in the middle of it instead of sitting down on the bed as she stares at her reflection in the mirror of the vanity dresser, as she waits for Scott to finally put a name to the sickening feeling that’s been squirming through her stomach all night; to the scream that’s been curled at the base of her throat for hours, now. 

Out to dinner with her father earlier, Lydia had recognized the oncoming sensation with enough time to excuse herself to the bathroom, where she’d spent a painfully long five minutes with her balled-up scarf against her mouth in one of the stalls. But the scream had never come, not fully; it’d stayed an agonizing possibility hovering just beneath her voice box, never materializing but never fading. So she’d gone back to the table and stretched a smile over her face, her phone face-down next to the delicate china of her plate as she waited for someone, for anyone, to respond to her text: did something happen?

And it’d turned out that something had: Monroe had attacked Theo and Liam. But Scott only knew that because Shohreh knew that, Shohreh who’d heard Liam’s desperate roar and put the pieces together. So Scott had said yes, and he’d sworn to keep them updated, and then, nearly two unbearable hours later, Lydia’s mouth starting to ache from small talk and her picturesque smile and the way she kept having to swallow that never-quite-there scream down, down, Scott had texted again: it’s over, Shohreh found them. Details later.

The wording had been immediately suspect; too convenient. Beyond the utter cop-out of that details later, Lydia’s attention had snagged on that supposed-to-be comfort, that wobbly reassurance: Shohreh found them. 

Not Liam and Theo are okay. Not even Theo’s okay but Liam isn’t, or vice-versa, or even neither of them are okay. Just a blunt statement of fact that could be interpreted—or misinterpreted—any number of ways. And Lydia, who knew how to weave those kinds of half-truths, who’d spent so long constructing a version of herself like a mirror, something that would reflect back whatever someone looking at her wanted to see—until Stiles, she had found herself thinking, had noted it clinically and filed it away for later—Lydia had recognized it for it was. 

It’s why she sits now; finally. She lowers herself down onto the starched stretch of the perfectly pressed bedspread and stares at nothing, holds her phone a little tighter against her ear, and says before Scott can steel himself to speak; to tell her what she already knows, “It wasn’t a mistake, was it.”

She means the lump still sitting heavy at the base of her throat; her almost-scream. She means, someone’s dead. And then, instinct and intuition spooling out before her automatically, helplessly—no matter how much she maybe wishes it wouldn’t—she realizes who.

“Theo,” She breathes, because why else would Scott be so hesitant to say anything? She loves Liam like the world’s most annoying kid brother and if something happened to him she’d be devastated, right along with the rest of the McCall pack. But Theo … I was their attack dog, not their lab assistant, Theo had snarled all those weeks ago, all that fury and blame directed inwards, and maybe given the right circumstances Theo would have said it to Liam or Malia or Scott or Argent, but he’d said it to her. 

But, more importantly, what he hadn’t said—I’m sorry—not because he wasn’t but because he’d—known it maybe didn’t matter. Not right then and maybe not ever, no matter how much he may have wanted it to. 

Lydia squeezes her eyes shut, her forehead dropping to brace on her upraised palm as the scream in her throat catches and twists and becomes something else. 

“I’m so sorry, Lydia,” Scott chokes out, and maybe to make up for his earlier stilted silence he explains before she can ask, “Monroe was—questioning him and Liam, trying to get information out of them. She poisoned him.”

“Not wolfsbane,” She murmurs, more to her herself because her mind is puzzle-piecing the information into place as it always does than because she’s talking to Scott, but Scott answers anyway.

“Mercury,” He replies, jolting her train of thought away from calculations about mistletoe, and Lydia is still trying to reorient herself when Scott adds, like a confession, “I think Gerard must have…”

And of course Gerard must have; that made all the sense in the world. The second Theo had reappeared on the scene at the police station Gerard must have. He’d been an Argent, after all: brutally efficient and sometimes just brutal. Lydia thinks of Allison, briefly and unwillingly, of how Allison had been after her mother’s death, and has to close her eyes. But then they snap right back open, because: death.

Death and mercury.

I’m just saying, Theo had drawled that one time, throwing a ball back and forth with Malia and seemingly completely uncaring of the volatile experiment by his flexing elbow, that a mystical serum that can bring people back from the dead? I have trouble believing it has an expiration date. A mystical serum that had brought four people back from the dead. 

Four people who’d been killed by mercury.

“Scott, the serum,” Lydia breathes, adrenaline surging through her strong and fast enough that she surges immediately and reflexively to her feet, “The serum.”

Scott isn’t going to get it, Lydia knows he’s not going to get it even before Scott stammers out, “What?,” obviously thrown by her sudden change in demeanor. 

“The serum,” Lydia repeats, aware even as she does it that she’s not clearing anything up, but she can’t help it, “The one Theo used to bring Corey and the rest of the chimeras back. It was from—”

“—the tank where the Dread Doctors’ used to keep Mr. Douglas,” Scott realizes, and shock scrubs his tone clean.

(the last can on the store shelves like the last of your resolve)

“—the tank where the Dread Doctors’ used to keep Mr. Douglas,” Scott realizes, staring out into the dark of the night and feeling the strangling vines of grief around his ribs freeze in their relentless squeezing; feels them loosen as a seed of possibility sprouts between his lungs instead.

There’d been a tank—there is a tank—in the Dorris operating theater, Scott remembers; the empty glass shell of it had been especially eerie, even given the fact that everything in the operating theater had been and remains eerie. It hadn’t bothered Theo but none of the equipment had seemed to bother Theo, and Scott had had to remind himself that Theo had grown up in places like the operating theater. That from ten years old onward his childhood had literally been spent in operating theaters and secret labs and whatever other clandestine places the Dread Doctors had burrowed their way into like particularly insidious parasites; that he knew how to use the equipment not because he was some kind of scientific savant but because he’d seen it used. 

Scott had always had to blink—I swear I’m the same kid from fourth grade—grainy memories away when he’d remembered that.

Scott drags himself back on track, “Was there—you think there’s…?”

“I know there is,” Lydia answers, and from the sounds Scott can catch through the phone, the sudden crackle of energy he can hear in her voice had crackled through the rest of her; he can hear her pacing, “It—Theo…he used to joke about it. That puddle of disgusting goo might be thing that helps us cheat death one day.”

That last part is so obviously a quote, Scott can tell by the quality of Lydia’s voice, the way she gives the words that slight mocking tone that everyone uses when they think someone has said something patently ridiculous. But her voice also breaks on the last few words, because now it maybe—isn’t a joke anymore. There’s a clattering of noise inside and Scott looks around reflexively, sees Chris and Shohreh and McPherson and the rest all straightened-up and staring at him, brows furrowed. Heartbeat, Scott realizes; his heart is pounding. As he looks wide-eyed back at Chris, he can see Malia—human-shaped and dressed once more—and Liam sitting up on the couch, too.

Scott meets Liam’s eyes and feels his breath catch.

“Will it work? ” Scott demands, and even as he asks it he knows it’s unfair, that Lydia can’t know anymore than Scott himself can; that the only person who might have been able to give even part of an answer can’t, for the very reason that they need the serum for. 

But Lydia doesn’t hold it against him. Or if she does, she doesn’t show it, just answers, “I don’t know, but we have to try. We have to… Don’t we?”

The way she says the last part it could be a statement or it could be a question but either way they both know what the answer is, and the answer is yes. Scott holds Liam’s gaze, aware that Shohreh and Chris and McPherson are looking at him, too, but unable to look away from Liam, from the way that Scott can tell his breathing has sped up, Liam’s shoulders rising and falling rapidly as he searches Scott’s face, so clearly trying to figure out what had happened, what had been said; what had startled Scott out of his grief. 

And so Scott clutches his phone a little tighter, rolls his shoulders back a little straighter, and tells her, “Yeah. We have to try. We’re going to try.”

Shohreh clearly thinks they’ve lost their minds and McPherson gets that look on his face that Stiles’ dad sometimes does, that silent law enforcement skepticism, but they don’t try to argue. Scott knows they’re being humored but doesn’t care, because the second he’d hung up with Lydia and hurried back inside, had started babbling—his words tripping over themselves—Malia’s and Argent’s scents and pulses had whiplashed around from grief-soaked and subdued to quick, staccato; brimming with potential.

And Liam.

Scott could practically see him thinking about Hayden, about—I’m not sure she’s okay, but she’s definitely alive. Raw, desperate hope and an aching sort of reluctance, afraid-to-believe-because-what-if all over his face, and Scott tries to smile at him, tries to believe hard enough for the both of them—for the both of them and the universe—and really only half-succeeds. But Liam—tries to smile back, manages only a grimace, but nods, once; he holds Scott’s eyes and nods.

Scott and Argent take Argent’s SUV, and this time Liam looks relieved to be ordered to stay behind with Malia, his mouth a wavering, tense line, and the angle of his shoulders constantly straining back towards the guest bedroom and Theo’s body still wrapped and covered on the bed. For a moment Scott almost wants to order him to come with them instead, reluctant to leave him alone—for the second time today, an accusatory voice sneers in Scott’s head—and especially reluctant to leave him to return back to Theo’s room, the stretch of wall where he’d been slumped when Scott and the others had originally arrived at Shohreh’s house. The urge passes as quickly as it’d come, and Scott looks at Malia after he’s finished looking at Liam, sees her give him a brisk, solid nod; Scott smiles as steadily back at her as he can. 

Scott’s still thinking about it all—Malia’s nod, the wounded line of Liam’s mouth—when he reaches Argent’s SUV, one of his hands already on the passenger side door handle when Argent suddenly says, “I need you to drive.”

(second chances, second chances, but you and me needed thirds)

“I need you to drive,” Argent says, and pretends not to see the way that Scott jumps, startled out of the thoughts clearly whirling their way through his brain.

Scott’s eyes are already wide when he turns to look at Argent but they get wider when they see whatever must be on Argent’s face. Or, more likely—Argent noting Scott’s nostrils flaring reflexively—whatever Scott smells coming off of his skin. Scott nods hastily after a second and catches the keys that Argent tosses to him, rounds the hood of the SUV and climbs into the driver’s seat without a word. 

Argent waits until Scott gets them on the highway, the horizon gone the inky dark of post-midnight and the lanes filled mostly with tractor-trailers and the occasional exhausted-looking commuter, and then he pulls out his phone. Araya Calavera having an iPhone shouldn’t be one of the stranger realities of Argent’s life but it somehow is, a jarring seeming-inconsistency that makes the whole situation seem unreal. You’re currently driving towards a genuine mad scientist lab so you can retrieve a mysterious serum in order to try bringing someone back to life, Argent reminds himself, but it—doesn’t change anything.

“Chris,” Araya answers, sounding crisp and authoritative and hooking immediately into every instinct that Argent had had drilled into his skull from a young age; Argent can feel his back straightening.

Scott looks at him strangely from the driver’s seat, clearly recognizing Araya’s voice. Argent doesn’t acknowledge the glance and doesn’t acknowledge the feeling in his chest that tries to start squirming, keeps his eyes on the road disappearing under the SUV’s hood. He isn’t sorry that he called the Calaveras and he isn’t sorry that he didn’t tell Scott about it, but it reminds Argent a little too much of fighting the Darach, the parallel lines of his and Scott’s mutual investigations and how badly trying to go it alone had nearly ended for both—for all—of them. 

This isn’t the same thing, but.

“Araya,” Argent greets respectfully, and swallows the question burning on his tongue, knows that Araya will speak when she wants to and no sooner, and will speak later if he tries to push her, out of plain and unashamed spite.

Argent hadn’t been sure about calling the Calaveras, at first, sat alone in his SUV after hanging up with Shohreh and handing Scott his phone back; it’d seemed a risk. Monroe may have been a genocidal psychopath but there was no arguing that by the end she’d turned into an effective werewolf hunter, if one was willing to overlook her methods. And so Argent had weighed his phone in his hand and considered, one ear on the Jeep behind him, waiting for Scott and Malia to pull themselves together enough to get back on the road to Shohreh’s: would the Calaveras overlook her methods? But in the end he’d put his thumb to Araya’s name and his phone to his ear, because the Code was the Code, and werewolves weren’t the only ones Monroe’s turned-traitor hunter family had betrayed.

“We located your loose-lipped colleagues,” Araya informs him briskly; her accent softens some vowels and clips others, but even still Argent doesn’t have to guess at her meaning, “We weren’t the company they were expecting.”

Argent is confused for a brief moment until he isn’t, his upper lip curling up in a snarl. Of course, of course, that’d been part of the traitorous bastards’ plan; they’d have known that their cover would have been blown the second Scott and Argent and Malia realized they’d been lured out of town to give Monroe a chance to attack Theo and Liam, but they wouldn’t have expected hunters to be the first on their doorstep. 

They would have expected wolves. 

Argent spares a moment to be grateful that he’d won his shouting match with the array of Southern California packs that’d been ready to claim their individual pounds of flesh out of the traitor family’s hide. Snarling do you want to start a real war at Simón Corrado had been less a brilliant strategy and more a desperate plea, because Argent could feel clammy pressure on the back of his neck like his father’s dead hand was there, tugging all their strings. But it’d worked, eventually. 

Eventually but temporarily, Argent knows, and he shakes his head slightly, refocuses on his conversation with Araya to ask, “You’ve secured them?,” tension in his voice like the tension drawing the proverbial leashes around the Southern California packs tight; ready to snap.

But Araya just says, “So to speak,” and then clarifies before Argent can ask, “They were reluctant to surrender to face the consequences of their actions.” Argent is just realizing what she means, his chest lighting up with a truly vicious flare of satisfaction, when Araya adds, sounding thoughtful, “Apparently they didn’t think they’d done anything wrong.”

Argent feels uneasiness go crawling up his spine, “Araya…”

Araya cuts him off, tone back to being businesslike, clipped, “We’ll clean up the mess and inform the Council of what happened.”

“Understood,” Argent tells her, and is just starting to add, “Thank—” when his phone beeps twice: call ended.

Scott lasts exactly ten seconds in the resulting quiet before he says, uncertain and broadcasting it in the way his fingers tighten and relax around the steering wheel, “Chris…”

“You’re going to miss the exit,” Argent warns him, cutting him off, and forestalls Scott’s attempt to restart the aborted conversation after Scott has sworn and quickly shredded across two lanes by thumbing open his contacts list and looking for Simón’s number, ignoring Scott’s furrowed brow and the conflicted twist to his lips.

The operating theater seems entirely unchanged from the last time Argent saw it, cold and drafty and bringing up uncomfortable sense memories of those frantic few weeks they’d all spent trying to stop the Dread Doctors and their murderous progeny. But as he glances around he spots a BHHS Lacrosse sweatshirt thrown carelessly over a stool, sees a neat stack of empty gatorade bottles sitting off to the side on one of the tables. Lemon-lime, the labels declare, the flavor inexplicably Theo’s favorite and one source of never-ending fuel for Liam’s constant poking at Theo, for his constant peeling of Theo’s locked-down corners; Argent swallows, and looks at Scott, who’s clearly trying to breathe through his mouth, his expression gone raw.

“Tank’s in the back corner,” Argent reminds him quietly, and watches as Scott jerks and turns his head to stare at him, eyes wide.

The tank is in the back corner, same as it’s always been, and there’s the dull glimmer of liquid lying sickly-looking in the bottom of it, just like Lydia had said. Even once they reach it Scott stands a few feet back, and Argent reads superstition in his tight shoulders and rigidly-crooked fingers. What if, Argent can practically see Scott thinking: what if he did something in retrieving the serum from the tank that screwed it up, or rendered it useless? Clapping a hand on his shoulder and squeezing, quick but firm, Argent turns and goes to search through the Dread Doctors’ cast-offs, looking for a syringe or a vial.

Once he’s retrieved as much of the serum as he can—every last drop he could force out of the bottom of the tank, because who the hell knows how much they might need—Argent gently offers the capped syringe to Scott and says, gently, “You should call Melissa.”

Scott freezes with his fingers already halfway around the syringe; Argent tightens his grip so that it doesn’t fall out of their joined hands, smoothly ignoring the way that panic and then guilt chase each other over Scott’s face at the almost slip-up. 

“Why should…? What does…?” Scott starts to ask, stammering it out, so Argent cuts him off.

“At the end of the day, what we’re about to attempt is still something like a medical procedure,” Argent answers, giving Scott the explanation that will allow him to jerk and nod and pull his phone out of his pocket after he’s finished taking the syringe from Argent and placing it carefully in his inside jacket pocket.

What he doesn’t give him is the actual explanation, Argent’s eyes on the back of Scott’s head as he wanders away, as he says Mom?, with a voice that just barely manages not to crack: that for whatever else he is, Scott’s still barely more than a kid, and sometimes kids just need—Argent’s throat tightening as he thinks of Alison, and Victoria, and Alison and Victoria—their mothers. 

Turning away to give Scott as much privacy as either of them can afford to give the other, right now, Argent pulls out his phone, too, his mind’s eye on the way that Liam had looked at them as he and Scott had left; hope that he wouldn’t let outside of the cage of his ribs, and grief that he couldn’t keep inside of it. But the call just rings and rings, and Argent jolts when he realizes—Liam doesn’t have his phone. Liam doesn’t have his phone because Monroe took it from him and probably destroyed it, right before she got down to the business of physically and emotionally torturing two boys, and one of them to death. Grimacing and shoving the thought away—though not before he’s let himself remember that Monroe is dead, finished off by her own hubris as much as by Shohreh and her pack—Argent hangs up, and dials a different number. 

“Argent?” Malia answers, her voice whisper-soft.

(the taste of the air in the desert at night)

“Argent?” Malia answers her insistently-vibrating phone, low and quiet but the sound of her voice still enough to make her flinch in the silence of Shohreh’s guest bedroom; in the temporary tomb it’d become.

She doesn’t know why she’s whispering. It’s not like Theo can care, not like he had all the times he’d thrown something against the shared wall between their bedrooms to protest the volume of her tablet in the Dorris house. And it’s not like Liam can care, not with the way that Shohreh had gently but implacably forced him into the kitchen and in front of a plate of reheated rice with some kind of shredded spiced chicken dotted throughout it. The smell of it had made Malia’s mouth water, but she’d taken one look at Liam’s shellshocked face and the way he kept looking helplessly towards the room with Theo’s body, and had refused Shohreh’s offer of a helping, had padded silently back to Theo’s room, feeling Liam’s eyes on her back the whole time.

“We have it,” Argent tells her, and Malia blinks against the surge-and-then-collapse of hope that tightens her throat, the desperate helpless fear that follows it: but what if. Malia turns so that she’s facing the wall instead of Theo’s body and swallows as Argent continues, “We’re heading back, we’ll be there in an hour.”

“Okay,” Malia tells him, still hushed, “I’ll let—let Liam and the others know.”

But she can’t let Liam know, not right away. When she steps into the kitchen on carefully light feet after hanging up with Argent, Shohreh and McPherson and Liam’s half-eaten plate are still there, but Liam isn’t. Malia stares at the space where Liam should be, the last place she knew him to be, and panic flares immediately and painfully out from her chest, because the last time she’d lost sight of Liam he’d been kidnapped and tortured and Theo had died. 

She doesn’t realize that she’s started to breathe in quick, harsh pants until Shohreh suddenly appears just inches in front of her, Malia’s eyes snapping to hers as Shohreh’s hands come up to cradle either side of her face as Shohreh orders, “Breathe, Malia. Breathe and listen, can you hear it? Liam is in the shower just down the hall.”

Malia meets Shohreh’s eyes, unable to look away and back at Liam’s empty seat even though she tries because Shohreh won’t let her look away, just holds her gently but firmly still as she continues to repeat breathe, Malia, breathe and listen. So Malia does, finally, closing her eyes and forcing air into her lungs before forcing it back out, her sense of hearing expanding as she does, blanketing the house. Members of Shohreh’s pack are scattered around the sprawling property, talking in hushed, careful voices or breathing in deep, exhausted sleep, but there just off the hallway there’s the familiar thump-thump of Liam’s pulse beating steadily under the low rushing flow of the falling water of the shower.

“I hear it,” Malia tells Shohreh, even though Shohreh had probably already realized that, Malia’s own rabbiting heartbeat and panting breaths slowing, “I hear him.”

Shohreh releases her, after that, and doesn’t linger. Instead she says so Chris and Scott are on their way back, a gentle prompt, and then nods in acknowledgement when Malia jolts at the reminder and quickly says yes. Malia looks up at her, sees Shohreh frowning thoughtfully at Liam’s abandoned plate, and Malia’s already coming up with excuses about how she’s fine, how she isn’t hungry, no matter her lowly growling stomach, because there’s already an itch between her shoulder-blades that says she’s been gone too long. But Shohreh seems to come to some kind of decision, and instead of demanding Malia sit, she leans over the edge of the kitchen island and snags Liam’s plate, drags it over towards her and then turns around with it in hand.

“Take this with you and finish it off, will you?” She asks, preempting Malia opening her mouth to protest, “Otherwise the ghost of my mother will appear and haunt me in despair—this was her recipe, and no one has ever left any on their plates.”

Malia stares at her, thrown, and then—when Shohreh doesn’t press or comment or do anything to suggest it’s unusual for her to stand in the middle of her kitchen offering half-eaten plates of food to grief-stricken teenagers—she reaches forward and takes it. Shohreh turns away, asks McPherson a question, and it’s—easier, without her looking, for Malia to clutch the plate a little closer to her chest and pivot on her heel to pad quickly back towards the guest bedroom. 

Which, Malia realizes as she puts her back to the wall and slides carefully down until she’s sitting, had probably been the point.

She feels better for the food, after she’s slowly picked the plate clean, aware in an absent sort of way that it’d been as delicious—more—than it’d smelled, but almost unable to taste it as she’d stared blankly at the bed and the woolen blanket still covering Theo’s body. She’s still sitting there, back against the wall and the empty plate in her lap, when Liam comes back into the room, wearing jeans too long for him and a shirt too baggy, his hair wet. Looking at him is somehow easier than it had been before he’d showered, and Malia abruptly realizes why; the silver streaks of Theo’s poisoned blood up his arms, smudging his face and staining his knuckles, are all gone. Liam notices her staring and flushes, rubs a self-conscious hand over his opposite, scrubbed-clean forearm and ducks his head.

“Shohreh,” He offers quietly, an explanation. 

Malia lifts the plate in her lap a few inches and wiggles it, echoes, “Shohreh,” in agreement. 

Liam gives her a shaky smile and then swallows—Malia can see his throat bob—as his eyes flick there-and-away from the bed, but after a half-beat of hesitation he makes his way carefully the rest of the way into the room until he can lower himself slowly down beside her. He keeps pulling his too-long sleeves down over his wrists and fingers and then pushing them back up again, over and over as he so obviously tries not to look at the bed and Theo’s body resting on top of it, and Malia is still trying to think of something to say when Liam beats her to it.

“He made me promise I wouldn’t tell her anything,” He says, glancing quickly at her and then jerking his head back down to watch his fingers tugging and pushing and tugging at his sleeves. Then he takes a deep breath and clarifies, even though Malia absolutely doesn’t need him to, “Theo. He—he made me promise not to tell Monroe anything.”

“Good. You shouldn’t have,” Malia answers immediately, thinking good for you at Theo’s still, silent chest.

Liam darts a sideways look at her, his hair slipping out from behind his ear and hiding most of his face as he murmurs, “He would have lived if I had, though,” quietly, like a secret; like a confession.

And he may not be looking directly at her anymore but Malia can feel the tension in his body straining towards her, the way that he’s still holding the breath he’d drawn before he’d spoken as he waits for her to respond. It reminds her of Scott, of Scott whispering I’m so sorry to Liam earlier, his shoulders already sagging with the additional weight of Theo’s death on top of them, and Malia suddenly can’t stand it.

“Don’t do that. Don’t make his decision all about you,” She snaps, her voice harsher and higher than she meant it to be.

Liam jumps and his head jerks around to stare at her, startled. And Malia’s sorry but she also isn’t, so she just scowls back at him, and eventually Liam’s shoulders relax back down, some, and he ducks his head, touches his tongue to his bottom lip and then looks back up at her.

“I mean, I think it’s a little bit about me,” He says, a wobbly smile tucked into the corner of his lips, and Malia stares at him for a second, the thought he sounds just like Theo running through her brain, and then she huffs a laugh and turns her head back forward.

“Maybe a little,” She allows, and darts him a quick, equally-wobbly smile.

They sit there in silence, for a while. They sit for long enough that Liam lets his head tip bonelessly back against the wall behind them, his eyes on the bed and their lids low, hooded. And then, eventually—as Liam’s eyelids get heavier, and heavier—his head tips over and lands lightly on Malia’s shoulder. Malia can feel it as Liam jolts fully awake at the impact, but before he can mutter an apology and straighten up, she tilts her head so that her temple is resting against the crown of his head. Liam freezes, but after a few seconds where Malia doesn’t move, her slow breaths stirring Liam’s—ridiculous, his hair is ridiculous, Theo had always said—hair, he relaxes back down, and then, after another few seconds have passed, he turns his face more fully into her shoulder.

Art by ArtZeppo

Malia comes awake some time later to Scott’s hand gentle on her arm, Scott kneeled down in front of her and Liam. She blinks up at him and he tries to smile, doesn’t quite manage it but Malia just gives him the same almost-smile right back, turns her arm in his hold so that she can wrap her fingers around his forearm in turn, squeeze it gently back. Scott leans forward just enough that he can rest his forehead briefly against hers, and then he pulls back and looks at Liam, who’s stirring and straightening up off Malia’s shoulder and staring at Scott, naked hope all over his face.

“Do you—do you have it?” Malia watches Liam ask, his eyes fixed on Scott’s.

(the curtains drawn back and the curtains drawn in)

“Do you—do you have it?” Liam asks. 

He does it even though he doesn’t really need to. The answer is yes and he heard Malia give it to Shohreh and McPherson earlier, when he’d been leaning against the cool tile of the shower in Shohreh’s guest bedroom and watching Theo’s silvered, poisoned blood wash slowly down the drain. But there’s a difference between that and Scott real and present and with his knees planted in the carpet in front of them, and Liam—he needs to know.

Scott just smiles, gently, steadier and more strongly than he’d managed when he’d tried it for Malia. “Yeah,” He answers, and reaches into his jacket to pull a capped syringe out from the inner pocket, the liquid inside gleaming a dull, poisonous-looking green, “Yeah, Liam. We got it.” 

Liam forces his eyes back up from where he’d been staring at the syringe, his head gone dizzy with his breathing gone shallow. But when he catches Scott’s eyes they’re steady, and red-flecked, and Liam finds himself inhaling when he sees Scott’s shoulders rise, exhaling when he sees them fall. Scott stays where he is, his eyes never leaving Liam’s, and keeps his breathing slow, and even; in for five, out for five. He only looks away when Liam does. 

“Okay,” Liam finally manages, “Okay.”

McPherson won’t let Scott or Argent take Theo’s body out to the cars, and Liam won’t let them insist that he ride with Scott instead of Argent, McPherson laying Theo’s wrapped body carefully out in the back of Argent’s SUV. No, Liam says, when Argent tries to order him to the Jeep. No, he says, when Malia puts a hand on his arm and gently pulls. 

“No,” Liam says, when Scott looks at him with tired eyes, gone heavy with the weight of their own color.

He climbs into the backseat of Argent’s SUV after Scott finally breathes okay, Liam, after Scott glances at Malia and tilts his head towards the Jeep. He can hear Argent opening his mouth as he does it, the rustle of fabric as Argent’s jacket slides against his skin as his shoulders slump, and he can hear it when Argent sighs, heavily, and gets into the driver’s seat without another word. Blinking his gritty eyes shut against the way that they want to burn, Liam twists around until he can hook his chin over the top of the cushion of the row of backseats, his eyes opening slowly back up to stare at the rough woolen blanket that Shohreh had wrapped Theo in; a burial shroud.

He doesn’t sleep on the way back to Beacon Hills, but he drifts. Argent rolls his window down, no doubt for the continuous blast of cold air it lets stream constantly over his exhausted face, and Liam takes deep drags of his scent that the wind sends into the backseat, his ears tuned to the steady thump-thump of Argent’s heart and his heavy-lidded eyes never leaving the exact spot of blanket where he knows Theo’s chest to be; in the monotonous rocking of the SUV on its shocks, it almost all blurs into one, loosening the fear and hope and grief gone calcified in his chest.

When they get to the McCall house, Liam nearly can’t go inside. Everyone is there, he realizes, his head coming up off the seat as he listens to the almost deafening cacophony of their heartbeats keeping unsteady time. After four hours in the car with no other sound but that of Argent’s pulse and his quiet breathing mixed unevenly with Liam’s own—after four hours of hearing, somehow, the sensory blank where Theo’s heart and lungs and body should have been—it’s too much, and Liam recoils reflexively back against the door. 

But then the opposite door opens, and his head jerks up as he looks at Scott. Scott studies him for a long moment, and then he holds out a hand, and waits. Liam sucks in a shaky breath, lets it shudder back out of him, and then he moves forward; he takes Scott’s hand. 

This time it’s Derek who refuses to let Scott or Argent carry Theo’s body inside; he steps outside onto the McCall porch just as Liam is shutting the door to Argent’s SUV behind himself, and meets Scott’s eyes when Scott glances over. They stand looking at each other for a long stretch of seconds, Derek’s eyes flicking over Scott’s shoulder to Argent just rounding the hood, and then Scott sags some and he murmurs, okay, murmurs, thank you. Liam goes when Scott puts a gentle hand between his shoulder-blades, follows Malia’s sure-footed steps up the porch steps as Derek passes them on his way to the cars.

He’s grateful for the grounding pressure when they step through the door and all attention turns to them, Liam nearly stumbling to a stop but kept upright by Scott’s fingers twisting carefully in Liam’s borrowed shirt. Several people start to come forward all at once and Liam presses back against Scott’s hand, harder and harder until the crowd of Ms. McCall and Stiles and Lydia and Corey and Mason parts and he sees his mom, stood uncertainly next to his dad, and Liam makes a raw sound and surges forward instead. 

“Oh, Liam,” His mom murmurs as she catches him, her arms coming up tight, tight around him; he shudders and presses in closer as his dad steps up to his back, locking both Liam and his mom into his embrace, too: “I’m so sorry, baby.”

The rest of the pack turns to Scott and Malia and Argent, gives them what privacy they can, and Liam squeezes his burning eyes shut and buries his face against his mom’s shoulder, bites back a grateful sound when his dad’s arms cinch tighter around his back and sides. Even underneath the inevitable noise of the full McCall pack crammed into the too-small McCall living room, and even with his face and his head and the rest of him hidden in the middle of his parents’ embrace, Liam hears it when Derek comes back inside; he hears the drag of the woolen blanket wrapped around Theo’s body against the skin of Derek’s forearms, his carefully grasping fingers as he lays Theo’s body down on the couch. 

Liam pulls away from his parents, smiling shakily up at his mom when she smooths a hand back over his face. In the rest of the room the level of noise has dropped considerably as everyone tries and fails not to look at him, the weight of their attempted inattention heavier than their attention could ever be. Liam has to swallow back a semi-hysterical laugh, because—because everyone is treating him—has been treating him—like some kind of war widow, and it’s a disturbing thought, except for how hard it would have made Theo laugh if he could see it. Liam swallows, again, and looks to Lydia, to his father, to Ms. McCall; to Scott.

“How do we do this?” He asks, and feels his fingers clench in the fabric of his mom’s sleeves, Liam lifting them at the last second to avoid wrapped them around her arms; his mom smiles softly at him and turns her palms up so she can grab his wrists in turn, squeeze gently.

In the end it’s more anticlimactic than Liam was expecting. He stands in the middle of the McCall living room with the rest of the McCall pack, surrounded by a bunch of people so clearly resisting the urge to tell him that it would be okay, because no one actually knew whether or not it would be, and he watches as Derek and the Sheriff and Argent unwrap Theo’s body from the woolen blanket Shohreh had wrapped it in. He watches as Ms. McCall—Dr. Deaton and Liam’s dad sharp-eyed behind her—comes forward, a stethoscope around her neck and the syringe full of the Dread Doctors’ serum in her hands. And he watches, breath held, as Ms. McCall slides the needle into Theo’s neck, just below the mess of his silver-blooded face, and presses the plunger down, down, until the syringe is empty.

“How long is this supposed to take, exactly?” Someone asks, but Liam doesn’t know who, all his attention on Theo; on his still chest and his sister’s still, silent heart.

C’mon, beat. Liam thinks, and can feel his body starting to strain forward towards Theo’s, just like it had back in the warehouse. C’mon, beat. He thinks, and feels his fingers twitching against his thighs, one of wrists in his mother’s hand and one of wrists in Lydia’s. C’mon, beat, he thinks, his eyes fixed on Theo’s chest, c’mon, please, please, please. C’mon, beat. 

And then, it does; Theo’s heart beats.