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“Scott...” the voice was soft and familiar. It wrapped around him, warm and sweet as caramel. “Scott...” He could melt into it.
He turned his head towards it, a smile already curling the corner of his lips.
“Sco-ott...” the lilt in the name suggested the person was smiling now, “Open your eyes.”
It was the voice of a person he would never deny anything.
His brown eyes opened, blinking against the soft glow of light, adjusting, focusing on the face that hovered above him. The features came together, forming a face... Dark dancing eyes, a dimpled smile, long curling brown hair framing all of it.
Scott’s heart clenched in a mixture of joy and pain he never knew could exist all at once, forcing the air from his lungs as he breathed out a name he hadn’t spoken out loud in over a year, “Allison...”
He quickly sat up and she leaned back to give him space, her smile still there, but sadder now, as if she knew what he was remembering... Her death, the loss of her, holding her in his arms as she assured him through the pain (Scott would always secretly marvel that she had tried to make him feel better as the blood stain on her dress grew with each beat of her heart. It should have been the other way around...).
She brushed her hair back over her ear and tilted her head - a gesture so familiar it made him ache down to his bones, “Allison... what are you doing here?” He looked around, trying to figure out where here exactly was. Everything was hazy. There was light, but he couldn’t make out its source. He felt like he should know this place, only there was nothing solid he could identify, like a name on the tip of his tongue that kept sliding out of reach.
“I think,” she said in a slightly teasing tone, “The better question is... what are you doing here?”
His brows rose, “What am I doing here? Allison, you’re...” the words wilted in his mouth, “I...” She gazed at him patiently as the last moments before he woke up came crashing down around him - Thunder roaring in his ears and flashes of images lightening through his head.
Stiles begging him to believe.
Liam asking him to give the Bite to Hayden.
Theo trapping him in the library with mountain ash.
Liam attacking him on the roof.
The Beta slashing at him, trying to kill him.
Mason stopping his best friend.
Hayden being dead.
Theo stabbing into his heart with the claws of a Chimera...
With a gasp, Scott felt like he was coming up for air. He scrambled to his feet, “Oh my god! I. He. Theo! He’s... He tried...” He felt jittery - shaken. His hands grasped at his chest, eyes examining his body while phantom pain clawed through him. Scott expected to see gaping wounds and blood, but there was nothing except his unmarred shirt and jacket. There were no signs of his injuries.
Allison rose and clasped her hands before her, clearly hesitant to touch him while he was trying to put things together. Her expression was understanding. Sympathetic.
Slowly, with realization, he lowered his hands and lifted his head, “I’m dead too. Aren’t I?”
The young woman shook her head, “No... No, not yet.”
“Not yet?” he swallowed hard. If he wasn’t dead, then was he hallucinating? Was this a dream?
She gave him a gentle smile and now approached him, “Not yet... But, you could be. If...” she hesitated, “If you want.”
“But I can still go back, right?”
Allison nodded.
He was about to say, “Yes, I want to go back. I have to go back! I have to save my friends!” but all of it died on his lips without being spoken. He had no friends. The pack had been destroyed and he’d like to have been able to blame it all on Theo, but he knew whose fault it really was... It was his. What would he do if he went back? They wouldn’t listen to him anyway and he couldn’t blame them.
Her hand rested on his shoulder, obviously getting what he was thinking, “You should go back Scott... You know that.”
Scott shook his head, “No I don’t. I don’t know anything! I... I failed Allison!”
“No you didn’t...”
He pulled back from her, “Yes I did! Liam just tried to kill me! If that isn’t a sign of how bad everything is, I don’t know what is!” He ran his hands through his hair, “Everything’s fallen apart! We’re keeping things from each other. No one trusts anyone! Every Chimera I tried to save has been killed, I’m not strong enough to fight the Doctors, Kira’s gone, Parrish locked himself up to protect everyone, Lydia looks at me like I’m a constant disappointment and Stiles... God! I broke his heart! And I knew I was doing it, but it was like I couldn’t stop myself. I was trying to hold on to... to this stupid idea of something and I should have just believed him! I trusted Theo - Damn it! I was so freakin’ desperate to just talk to someone who’d listen and look what happened!” Tears threatened his eyes as his voice broke, “I’m supposed to be something special because I’m the True Alpha, but I don’t have any idea what I’m doing! I don’t have any answers to anything!” Scott flopped his arms to his sides, “I’m just some stupid teenager who can’t even manage to get through A.P. Biology. I’m just... me... and that’s not enough. I’m not enough...”
Allison didn’t flinch once during his tirade, but at his last words, she did, “Scott, you are enough, you--”
“No I’m not!” Scott cried desperately, “I failed! At everything! I couldn’t stop anyone from dying - not any of them - just like I couldn’t save you!” he blurted out before covering his face as the weight of everything crushed him inside. He wanted to collapse and curl up into a ball... To never get up again.
After a moment, arms slid around him... Allison embracing him from behind, her head resting against his shoulder. It was... so real. So familiar. He could feel his heart breaking all over again. “You couldn’t have saved me Scott...”
“I...” his hands dropped.
“No...” she set her chin on his shoulder, “You couldn’t save me Scott. I decided to go after Lydia that night. I chose to fight the Oni with Isaac and Kira while you and a Stiles searched for her. I chose to help Isaac when it looked like he was going to be taken down. The only way you could have saved me was to keep me from going in the first place. And we both know how that would have gone.” Allison turned her head a bit to gaze at him, a playful smile on her lips.
He couldn’t help the huff of humor that came out of him, “Yeah...” he rubbed at his eyes, “That would have gone badly.” It didn’t stop the pain though... the guilt... the realization that he wasn’t ever good enough...
She moved around to face him, taking his hands in hers, “Then why are you holding so much of my death in your hands? So much on your shoulders?”
“Because I should have done something,“ Scott whispered, eyes on her pale hands holding his darker ones. “I should have seen what Theo was... I should have trusted my friends... I should have found a way to keep them safe,” he shook his head, “I should have saved you,” he insisted.
With a sigh, Allison stepped back, “Scott,” when he looked up at her she said, “I forgive you.”
Scott gasped softly, the air gone from his lungs like she had just punched him. “How... Why?” he asked almost inaudibly.
Releasing one of his hands, she cupped his cheek, her thumb stroking beneath his eye, “You need to forgive yourself...”
For a heartbeat, he wanted to protest. It was all there in his mouth, ready to be said. Instead, his body crumbled, and if her arms didn’t come around him, he would have fallen to the ground.
A strange sound wracked through Scott and then he was sobbing in her embrace - pain and loss, frustration and helplessness - all of it, pouring from him, face pressed into her neck. He was cracked open and everything flowed out without any way for him to keep it back. Had had no idea he’d been holding in so much... a flood... a storm that Allison withstood for him, holding him so he didn’t fly apart - so he had something to hold on to.
Over and over, she told him that she forgave him, that she wasn’t angry at him - was never angry at him and never blamed him. She told him she was okay now. She was safe and she was happy - That things happened the way they were supposed to and that he didn’t have to carry it all on his shoulders.
And Scott wept. Heaved body shaking sobs and cried for the loss of her, for the losses that followed... He cried till there was nothing left in him and he felt like he was washed up on a shore after a shipwreck - drained and exhausted.
He must have fallen asleep because he awoke to the feeling of laying in a bed, Allison cradling him. His head was resting on her shoulder, the beat of her heart a comforting sound in his ear as her fingers stroked his hair. Neither of them moved to rise from the bed and it made him think of the days they had done the same thing in her room not so very long ago... Her lifetime ago...
“I miss you...” he whispered, voice rough. Scott loved Kira, but part of him would always love Allison. Even if they weren’t together, he had always wanted her to be a part of his life.
“You’ll see me again,” she murmured.
It was strangely reassuring to know that.
They lay in silence and he felt their time together was going to end soon. It was a twitch along his back, making him feel anxious, “I don’t want to go back,” he admitted, knowing it sounded a bit childish, but then, he wasn’t fully an adult either, was he?
“You don’t have to,” her hand stopped caressing his hair, “But if you don’t and things get worse when you could have tried to stop it, how will you feel?” It was clear she knew the answer to that question already, because she continued, “You’re a werewolf, Scott, and an Alpha. A True Alpha,” she added, “But you’re only human. You’re gonna screw up,” her shoulders lifted in a quick shrug, regret in her eyes, “I did.”
“But what can I do for them? My pack. If I can even call them that now. Why would any of them come back to me? Why would they even follow me?”
“Scott,” she sighed, “You know, we didn’t listen to you because you were smart.”
He rolled his eyes, “Gee, thanks.”
Allison smirked but went on, “Or because you were clever or powerful. We followed--They follow... because you give them the one thing they need when everything is so dark that they can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” he asked doubtfully, gazing up at her.
“Hope. You give them hope, stupid,” Allison answered with that dimpled grin he missed. “They look to you because you don’t give up. You keep going. No matter what’s trying to stop you, you keep going and seeing you do that, gives them the strength to keep going too. Even if you might fail.” Her head tilted, “So don’t start giving up now. Okay?”
“But what if--”
“Scott, no matter how hard you try, sometimes you’re going to fail, but that doesn’t make you a failure. It doesn’t make everything else worthless,” her hand gripped his.
Scott nodded, feeling more ready to go back now - to face what was waiting for him, “Will I remember any of this?”
“No,” Allison answered sadly, “I’m sorry, but you won’t. Not consciously at least.”
His heart beat sped up, knowing their time together was coming to an end. It made his chest hurt. He leaned up, bracing on his elbow so he could gaze down at her. His eyes traced over her features and he was amazed at how much he’d forgotten - how much had gotten hazy in his memory... The way her eyes crinkled when she smiled, the curl of her lips, the different shades of brown and some red in her hair. Allison was always so strong. The Huntress... “I’m going to lose you again...”
“You never lost me, Scott. I’m always here.” Her hands lifted to gently hold his face and guided him close. Before her lips, warm and soft, met his, she whispered, “Now, go back and show them that Scott McCall can still roar...”
“Come on Scott!” his mother shouted, “ROAR!”
Later on, while talking to his mother, Melissa would tell him he gave his friends... hope - saying the word like it just came to her, perfect and right - and Scott would feel a surge in his heart, like he was forgetting something important...