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After the ice bath, the watch had stopped.
Before- Scott had watched the second hand ticking the time away. Each little click on the face signifying moments that passed that he could never get back.
Moments where his mom, Stiles, and Allison’s dads were imprisoned. Held hostage by his English teacher.
It all sounds so far-fetched as he holds the broken piece of jewelry in his hands in Dr. Deaton’s office.
She used to say it was the only thing in their marriage that ever worked.
Scott had grabbed it in a hurry. The problem with finding an object with meaning to connect him to his mother was that she’d never put a lot of value in stuff.
His mom had never even asked where it was.
Scott traces his hand over the broken face. He looks up when Dr. Deaton enters the office and blinks. The watch doesn’t help him- but he can hear the sounds of life stirring in the Preserve and town with the slightest stretch of his hearing.
Bird chirping, cars speeding down the road, people greeting each other with “good mornings” and “how are yous”. It’s all so distant, even though it sounds inches away.
“Have you been here all night?”
“Not quite,” Scott admits. He’d spent dinner at home, alone. His mom had gone back to work.
It had been hard to watch her keep her face blank, head high, shoulders straight as she strained to act like she wasn’t nervous.
He didn’t have the heart to remind her that he could smell the fear she was trying so desperately to hide.
Scott sets the watch on the desk, tracing the face with his fingers. “Did you keep all of them?”
“Stiles took the badge with him that night, the bullet disappeared. I don’t know if Allison took it or not.”
“Were the other objects broken?”
Dr. Deaton glances at the watch. “Each of them lost something, I imagine. It was, after all, a sacrifice.”
Scott turns that word over in his head again. A word that’s become so familiar it’s almost meaningless at his point.
“So I can have it back?”
“Of course. If you’re still talking about the watch.”
“We’re supposed to go back to school tomorrow. Me and Stiles and Allison. Sometimes- I’m not sure what’s real, you know? My supernatural life or my human one.”
Dr. Deaton slides into the chair on the other side of his desk. The wrong side. It works, because everything is wrong right now.
Maybe it’s always been.
Maybe I should just be no one again. No one at all.
In the end, he’d taken Stiles with him when he’d died. Allison, too.
What if it’s just me?
If he’d been nothing, maybe Jennifer would never have taken his mom.
Or maybe she’d be dead, and Derek would be with Deucalion.
“Stiles and I both feel it. Every day, just like you said we would.”
Dr. Deaton’s smile is sad.
“And it makes me think about that quote Jennifer used to start our first class…”
She’d been the best English teacher they’d had. For some reason, that hurts as much as anything else. Wondering what could have been.
“Because when I feel it…yeah, it’s like I’m looking ‘into the heart of an immense darkness.’”
“So what do you do instead?”
Scott takes a breath.
Thinks about Allison.
There's always hope.
The way Stiles stepped close and wrapped his hand around Scott’s.
I think you’re just gonna have to take me with you then.
About Lydia risking herself to push them away from the flames.
“I look for my friends.”