Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A brunette woman in a plum blouse straightened the papers in front of her and looked straight forward. Her image flickered slightly.

“Thank you, Jim. Last night another body was found just two hours south of the news station on the banks of the Green River. The body was that of 26 year old, Kelly Frances, who was studying for a degree in education and was planning to go on to teach for her alma mater, Beacon Hills High School. As our viewers know, over the last few months murder rates have been on the rise in the area and now police may have found a pattern. I hate to say it, Donna, but it looks like we might have a serial killer on our hands.”

The lady in yellow, Donna, nodded grimly. “It would seem so, Karen. Now the police aren’t releasing any details on how the body was found or the state the body was found in….”

The screen flickered off with a click.

Sheriff Stiles Stilinski paced in his office holding his spool of red yarn or as the deputies liked to call it ‘the mystery string.’’ He paused momentarily to glare at the pile of papers on his desk. Maybe if he stared at them long enough they’d disappear on their own. Instead of taping another picture onto the cork board behind him, he turned and sat down hard in the chair behind his desk. Stiles spun his chair around in a slow circle and picked up his phone to dial his best friend. His leg bounced nervously as he listened to the dial tone.

“Hey Scott.” Stiles sighed into the phone. He pushed aside some papers on his desk, attempting at some sort of order to the chaos.

“Tough day?” Scott laughed. Stiles could hear a faucet or a door squeak in the background and briefly wondered what the FBI agent does with his day. He sometimes imagined Scott sitting behind a nice desk in a big DC office or on a job in New York City, maybe Miami or some other large city, canvassing some crime or another.

“Horrible. We found another body in the Green River.” Stiles leaned back in his chair, winding a red twine around his index finger. He held the spool in his hand, pulling the twine tighter and turning his fingerprint to an unhappy purple. He had all the intentions of mapping out a current case, but had called Scott instead.

“What?! Dude, you used to be ecstatic over finding bodies! Remember Laura Hale?”

“We were sixteen, bodies were fascinating in general” he chuckled to himself, the first time he had cracked a smile in two days. Stiles unwound the red string from his finger, placing it down on his desk with the resolve that talking this out with Scott was a bit more important for his sanity than trying to connect pieces of a crime spree with red string. “Thought you’d find this one interesting, though. Remember a while back? The MO of that serial you were assigned to? Exact same.Bodies are being found near the river. There’s already a lot of calls coming in from panicked college kids being paranoid about all the construction work on the dorms that’s going on, now I’ve got bodies turning up!”

“Could just be a copy cat.” Scott’s voice came through the speaker, optimism seeping through the line. Stiles could picture Scott shrugging and trying to maintain a grin on his dopey puppy-like face. He had no idea how Scott was ever taken seriously in the FBI with such an innocent puppy face.

“No, buddy, you don’t get it. Exact. Same. Aspects about the crime scenes and the bodies that were never released to the public are matching up, that kind of same. Like the hair parting thing.” Stiles dragged his hand down his face and sighed.

Stiles could hear Scott chewing on his lip, a nervous habit he could hear miles away by the change in Scott’s breathing.“I’ll let my director know that he’s at it again and I’ll be out there tomorrow.” There was a beat of silence before Scott took a deep breath and spoke again. “You know, I talked to him pretty recently. Couldn’t pin anything on him that time though, so we had to let him go. He’s good, Stiles, really good. This won’t be easy.”

“You better hope he’s getting sloppy then. It needs to be stopped.”
Scott sighed but didn’t say anything else, just the quiet hum of his agreement and chewed on his lip

“It’s just all happening so fast, Scotty. And now it’s my job to handle it.” Stiles let out a sad sigh.

“I have to handle it.”

“I know, Stiles.”

The last thing Stiles said was the dial tone, a gentle little click on his end. He tossed the receiver on to his desk and closed his eyes to try and make sense of all the nothing.

Some many miles away in his office, FBI Agent Scott McCall put down his phone. He hadn’t been aware that Stiles had ended the call until he heard the dial tone buzzing in his ear, he had been too busy staring at an old wanted poster of the man who started this all, allegedly anyway. Scott had to remind himself of that. The man from the case that haunted him in his sleep. While the law dictated that Peter Hale was innocent until proven guilty, Scott and Stiles had both known in their guts for a long time that he wasn’t innocent in the slightest.

Back when Scott was fresh from the academy, he had been put on his first assignment under his superior at the time, the murder of a young girl about Scott’s age at the time, maybe a little older. He was still green, unpracticed, and a little naive. When they caught the suspect, a man named Peter Hale who had supposedly killed the girl, a niece or something, Scott flubbed through the standard questions. He was too nervous, Hale was too cool and practiced. In the end, Hale had been sentenced to a few years on abuse charges, released under probation a few weeks after incarceration for good behavior, fully free from the system within a year. Scott kicked himself for not being able to lock him up for longer every day that he heard about another murder that fit the same MO as the girl. This time, Scott McCall wasn’t going to let the killer go free. Scott McCall was going to close this case. (details are sketchy/can be changed, just figured it was believable that Scotty would have flubbed, be upset about it, & out to set his mistakes right.)

A good memory was what put Malia through school and every teacher qualifying for assisted living will be there to tell her that. They'll say that memory was all that could put her through.
But she didn't have a good memory, she had a perfect memory. Rhyme schemes were all she wanted to have in her head, the same kind of divine verses that put wordsmiths among the stars and history books. All that was real inspiring and perfect sounding, but Malia didn't really have the same sense and thoughts that she could fathom up and string together with participles and good syntax and all the fancy crap she studied as a kid. But, she had a perfect memory for divine phrases and that is how she met Kira.

All through high school, Malia kept begging the drama teacher to give up on the musicals and put forward some blissful Greek tragedies and pastoral comedies that could roll in her jaw like bubble gum. But bum towns with more trailer parks than government houses didn't wanna see stage literature, they wanted a good laugh and some inspiring story about gangsters or sing-song plays from kid's books.

And if it weren't for Kira Yukimura and her eccentric as Warhol film teacher, Malia would have gone down the pathway of obscure waitressing in bars and bbq shacks instead of the bubble gum soft world of bright starred actresses. Because even if she couldn't get up there amongst those history books she'd fall right next to the reference notes and page corners.

Kira was so much better than anybody Malia had ever met in their podunk excuse for a town. She was smart and thoughtful, prettier than any trashy mag model that got put up in the window racks of gas stations. She had fox blood in the lines of her fingerprints and left traces on undeveloped photographs.

They traded all the silly things that children did when they weren't too old to be adults. Malia left notes in books and lockers, remembered stupid dates, and called in the low hours of the night just to hear Kira breathing. She followed her around like a puppy, dreamy eyed when she was around but snarled like a dog at anyone else. When she kissed Kira for the first time it was like diamonds breaking diamonds and then the soft little humbling clatters like music when Kira kissed her back.

Kira became the camera man, documenting their rambunctious lifestyle they had little to no control over with Malia as the starlet that lit up the footage. They made short films dedicated to dead poets and playwrights, Malia's voice the narrative that connected every scene from Marlow to de Lamos to Longfellow. The camera man and the starlet, all too excited to leave home for better things.

They thought they'd be going south, down through California where the golden dreams were shuffled in copper pans. But instead they went North, up through Oregon to the river that straddled Seattle. Malia had dreams that were carried in stanzas but Kira's were cautionary, horrific, and much more crowd pleasing. Kira wanted to catch the trail of a murdered and put it on her shiny black camera.

Two days after they graduated high school, prospects for Kira much more promising than Malia's, they took the dilapidated Sedan that Malia's mother couldn't drive and took it up the Million Dollar Highway. Fake ID's and the skills to flirt her way out of a ticket was what got them on their way, a small amount of money to buy cheap as candy gas and moth eaten sleeping bags to sandwich them at night.

Kira had heard about the Green River Killer when her mom fell asleep in front of the tv, too tired to close her realty notebooks and put herself to bed. The killer hadn't been identified, only a couple of leads that kept on leading nowhere were the highlights, and missing girls kept getting identified as dead girls. It was all perverse and surreal and ideal for film. Someone who wasn't keeping all the details on an outdated pc needed to document this for the public. Kira wasn't a journalist, she didn't need the truth. She needed it to be outside itself; to be seen, heard, and understood.

Malia’s rickety old Sedan wooshed down the highway, pushing just over the speed limit, ignored by empathetic police officers. They were on a deadline, one body after another laid out on Kira's lap through scoured photocopied newspapers and printed out tabloids. She was making a harsh outline of the discovered victims of the Green River Killer, plotted out as good as she could with her highlighters and paperclips.

Malia drove them like bats escaping the River Stix, sipping cherry cola from a big gulp cooling in between her thighs. She didn't look away from the road very often. Just the occasional gaze and smile to Kira when she got too quiet or radiated stress. Most nights they slept in the car, curled up in the back wrapped in a sleeping bag, and Malia noticed when she kicked like a nightmarish dog.

"You doin' okay?" Malia asked eventually when she started seeing billboards again, signs that said they were close to the next town.

"Yeah…yeah," Kira nodded automatically, "this is all just a lot….to take in at once."

Malia looked over twice, kept her eyes fixed on the never ending blacktop, and grabbed the edge of Kira's stack of notes. She overturned at least two of the papers, a few others falling down between the seats. Kira protested, haughtily with a huff, and Malia entwined their fingers together.

"Take a break, it's been like four hours since we left Parkside. Play a game with me or something," Malia chided, pulling her in close with one hand on the wheel like it was glued to the vinyl.

"Fine fine," Kira gave in, leaning towards the driver's side. "Let's do, uh, the license plate game."

"You kinda have to have cars with license plates to play that. There was an Oregon plate about 35 minutes ago but I don't think that counts," Malia replied.

"Okay, maybe, Alphabet Signs?"

"Hmm, not many signs either; 65 miles till the next town."

"Really can't play much in a little car, sweetie," Kira said, then feeling the tickle of an epiphany in her head. "Wait, I know.."

Kira dug back behind her passenger seat, hidden underneath blankets and empty chip bags. She pulled out her camera bag, safely stowed away under the guise of useless linens and trash. She tossed the shuffled papers on her knees to floor with the rest and rifled through the bag in its stark black zippers and nylon for their most precious possession. A black film camera with a perfect moon eclipsed lens.

"Poet me," Kira said, looking to check the power and memory. Sinking back, she aimed the lens on to Malia, pushing back against the car door and resting her foot on the interior console.

Malia laughed, smirking like she didn't love the attention and shaking her head. "What do you want to hear?" She asked.

Kira clicked on record, the little red light blinking in her vision line while she watched from the view finder. "Who's that Uruguay lady you were talking about?"

"Augustini!" Malia exclaimed, biting her lip to remember what she'd read. "I will tell you the dreams of my life…On this deepest of blue night, in your hands my soul will tremble, on your shoulders my cross will rest.

"The summits of life are lonely," she snuck her hand down to Kira's ankle, grabbing it and slipping into her sock.

"So lonely! So cold! I locked my yearnings inside, and all reside in the ivory tower I raised. I raised!" She dramatically shook Kira’s like a bolt of electricity going through her fingers. all the while keeping one at ten on the wheel and never looking away from the road.

"Today I will reveal a great mystery, your soul has the power to penetrate me," she glided her grip up Kira's leg, denim getting in her way. "In silence are vertigos of the abyss. I hesitate…I am sustained in you…" she trailed off, turning her fingers upward in the crook of Kira's leg and tickling the back of her knee, a sensitive spot. Kira squirmed and squealed, folding into herself and accidentally switching to photo mode, taking three blurry pictures of the car interior.

Malia grinned and leaned in to her when Kira crashed in to her arm, burying herself beneath Malia's arms. "No tickling the driver!" She protested as the her hand slipped around wheel, fingertips losing traction, and Kira wrapped herself in to Malia’s stomach like it was a landing platform, blowing raspberries on the fat of her exposed belly. They stayed giggling, a mess of childish laughter.

They settled down, coming up on a long stretch of road. It was too smooth a road to do anything but feel like every bump was a junket. The eventual lazy radio buzzed in to a new station and pop music gently played.

They covered more road in an hour than pioneers could in two days. The wasteland of Oregon stretched out like an apocalyptic ferry ground, the occasional farm dotting the countryside. Fields of corn plentiful and without the scent of harvest.

Malia felt like she had gulped an entire ocean of soda and can't keep twitching at the cherry cola making waves in her tummy, the mercy of tides slapping her stomach walls. She had to pee.

Kira made small talk, dedicated again back to the sprawl of lifted documents all in the right order. Her free hand had absentmindedly wandered over to Malia’s shoulder, lazily caught in her hair, an intimate curl of her finger in the light careless tresses. She could feel the constant bump of her shoulder against her hand but it was too amusing to bring attention to. Malia suffered in silence for most things anyway. She bragged in her excellence constantly and that was annoying.

Road signs kept getting more reasonable. 40 miles to Saint Everett, 20 miles to Saint Everett, entering Court County, 5 miles to next gas station. The glorious return of civilization was upcoming and it had an ivory throne.

Malia took the next exit when they finally crossed into rest-stop territory. A dilapidated old gas station, complete with a complimentary auto-body service center and petrol staining smell. The heat of sun soaked concrete radiated the smell of natural fuels like the perfume of a Dilophosaurus.

She pulled up to the front parking, checking the gas tank and hoping it wasn't at that age where it lied for no damn reason. "You want anything?" She asked Kira, who pulled off her seatbelt for the sake of comfort and locked her door for the sake safety. Reading about murders for hours on end kept your nerves on edge.

"Hmm, I'm feeling some gummy bears and OJ," she replied, smiling with teeth too white to belong to a delinquent. She put her feet up on the dash and sank in to her seat, watching Malia shut her door and walk in to the greasy windowed gas station.

The inside was all it was cracked up to be. A tiny store front complete with nudey mags in the front display and an array of diuretic coffee fixings to induce twitching. Malia looked around, searching for some kind of blue stick-figure-in-a-dress signage. A bored man with the a scruffy beard and pristine cliché overalls was watching her behind the counter. Watching not because she was too tanned to live north of California and had legs that wouldn't quit in cut off shorts, but because she was doing a very interpretive pee-dance. Much like an overactive puppy picking a fight.

Malia stared him down, judging back at his 'Al' name tag and mafioso facial hair. She broke it off, saying, "I swear I'm gonna buy like $10 in candy but first, I gotta use your head. Got a bathroom?"

Unperturbed, he picked up the forgotten base of a hammer with a key attached on a chain and waved it at her. "It's through that door. DON'T leave it in there," he said, waving to a red door opposite a soda fridge.

The other side just lead to a greasy hallway where the crown moldings were made of asbestos. The walls were bleak sheets of wavy metal that refracted the little rainbows of light that poured through rusted circles. The bathroom door was one of two, opposing sides and mostly identical.

She tried the first one, gingerly jostling the handle to see if it was open. It creaked forward and she cracked it open, carefully eyeing the inside of what looked like an auto shop. It was mostly empty, swinging tools following the breeze that creeper in from the open front huge pulls doors. It was illuminated by the natural light.

A rustling came from a far away office and Malia quickly shut the door with a quiet click. The door fanned her, thrusting a breeze that didn't smell like petrol or grease like she expected. It smelled of something she couldn't recognize.

She bounced over to the other door, knocking first out of a kind and unlearnable habit.

The bathroom was a rare kind of clean. Covered from floor to ceiling in chipping blue tile, a standard color out of cheap catalogues. It looked like it had been sprayed down recently, the edges of the grout damp and shiny. The overpowering scent of off brand pine sol lingered.

It was oddly relaxing but she still hovered over the seat and used her foot to flush.

Going back she forced herself to ignore the door to the auto shop. The smell bothered her, unable to place something that felt like it should have been obvious. Most of the men her mother dated were handymen or janitors or mechanics. It was an unspoken preference of hers to have someone who was good with their hands and fixed things compulsively. And they all smelled the same, grease under their fingernails and the distinct odor of apathy in the stains on their Henley's.

It bothered her, not knowing when she thought she should have.

In the gas station she picked up two $1.50 containers of gummy bear, knowing full well that when Kira said 'some' she meant 'too much of', and a few ice cold sodas from a leaking refrigerator.

Returning the bat sized key, she commented, "you've got like the cleanest bathroom I've seen in the past month." She threw down the bags and bottles clumsily, pushing them all together on the counter.

The cashier just smiled, unamused and bored as ever. He put down a magazine he had been reading, two stuffed inside each other to hide the fact that he was reading a Playboy instead of WWE Monthly.

"$5.54," he said ringing her up.

"Thanks... I've been on a road trip with my girlfriend for a couple days. We're going up to Washington," Malia said, taking the change he handed her and pocketing it in her cutoff shorts.

The cashier nodded, going back to his magazine.

"...So, you probably get a lot of those Green River tourists who wanna known about the murders?” Malia said, grabbing the bags and sodas that pulled all the heat from her hand.

The cashier gave her the side eye, not facing her but obviously intrigued.

"My girlfriend and I wanna poke around, maybe turn up so stones for a film we're doing. She’s the director, really good behind a camera," she shrugs and goes on. "It's how we met."

The cashier grunts, like a subtle chough, flipping through the magazine.

"We probably won't find anything but that's half the fun, getting to take the long drives in the summer. But she's pretty confident that we'll get some good footage, maybe a whole movie to show off. She knows more about all that industry and festival crap than I do," she makes a point, using one of the bottles like a teaching baton. Little fizzing bubbles formed at the top like bits of carbonated panic.

The cashier didn't reply in any way, continually flipping pages.

Malia took it as a cue to leave; running her mouth wasn’t as fun when she didn't elicit some kind of response.

On her way out she threw over her shoulder, "This month's spread of Legs has a lot better photos, by the way." She didn't look back to see his face but she hoped it got him a little riled.

Back in the car, Kira had found a radio station that played golden oldies, the low ambience of a "I Got A Man" settling as she tapped her foot to the repeating words.

Malia slid in and tossed one of the bags on her lap, putting the bottles in the cup holders and corralling the change out from her pocket.

"Bathroom clean?" Kira asked, tearing into one of the bags.

"Weirdly clean..." Malia replies. She puts the car in reverse, backing out of the spot. She put it in drive, racing out back on to the interstate.

"Watch it, Cowgirl," Kira said, spilling a few candies on to her lap and bracing her arm on the window. "Weird how?"

"It was...it had a weird smell to it. And it was top to bottom high pressure water clean," Malia explained.

"Maybe their janitor is a clean freak," Kira said, putting her focus into playing with her food.

"Maybe."

Malia put them in at a cruising speed, steering with her knees and leaning over to pull gummy bears from Kira's lips. They weren't far from Green River, no more than an evening's ride if they didn't stop until morning.

They'd sleep on the banks of the Green River, the lichtenberg scar runoff that twisted down out of Washington and leaked traces of itself over creeks and streams, emptying at the mouth of a lake that was as strange as the murders themselves.