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It’s an odd sensation, more like floating than falling.
The last thing Scott fully registers is the guttural gasp that shudders through his body as Theo claws into his chest, and then, an indistinct haze. Somewhere, there is shuffling and someone is talking, but it is muffled and he is too far gone for any sufficient level of cognition. The pounding of his heart is so loud that it rings in his ears, and Scott isn’t sure if it’s still in his chest or if Theo has truly ripped it out and left it to bleed beside his body on the steps— he might as well have. Each breath he takes rattles noisily through his ribcage as he struggles to keep his eyes open, everything blurry except the pale light of the super moon creeping through the windows overhead. Blood trickles softly down his skin and it is the only thing Scott tastes in his mouth before he cannot hold out any longer and the last vestiges of his consciousness slip away.
And then, he floats. In liminality.
Talking about what would happen to a person after they died had always been one of Stiles’ favourite things to discuss— the hypotheticals. Scott was never as invested in picking apart such trivial ideas, not when there were more practical matters like lacrosse and school and life to worry about. Not so trivial now, though. Oddly, he finds himself wishing he could satisfy Stiles’ ceaseless curiosity and tell him exactly how it feels.
There is nothing grand or extraordinary or even particularly frightening about it at all. He drifts in and out and in and out and in and out, a pendulum, swinging back and forth, until he just feels like curling up into a ball and letting his heart give out from the sheer effort. When he was still a kid, his father had taken him to the lake once, to teach him how to swim. Except he got distracted and left Scott splashing in the water alone, who waded further and further out until all of a sudden his feet couldn’t touch the bottom anymore and he was desperately flailing underwater, lungs burning. The descent into his death is exactly like drowning: vast blackness stretching out around him, searing pressure in his chest as he scrambles in futility for oxygen. In the void, Scott can no longer tell if he is dead or alive.
He’s not even sure which one he is hoping for.
Just as a wave of tranquility washes over him, air rushes into his lungs and he gasps for life. Scott’s eyes shoot open. For a moment, he thinks he is still on the library floor, but his arms pimple from the cold air and looming trees swim in his vision. He sits up, breathing heavily, head as sluggish as his movements. Dead leaves crunch beneath him as he crawls to his feet and looks around.
Scott’s brow pinches as he struggles to piece together how he ended up in the woods and who would have brought him here. Theo? The Dread Doctors? He winces in pain and apprehensively checks his chest. Blood spots through his shirt and the wound gapes, no signs of healing in sight. By now, his body should be stitching itself back together.
Scott reaches for his phone, but finds nothing. He scans the surrounding forest floor in the hope that maybe it just fell out of his pocket, and spots a flash of blue. His inhaler.
Except there is a little smiley face sticker along the bottom of it, just like the one on his old inhaler before his mom had gotten it replaced a year ago.
“What the hell?” Scott mutters to himself as he turns it over in his hands. A chill runs down his spine. He looks down at his clothes, at the striped shirt and faded red zip up that he grew out of over a year ago. That he had been wearing when they went out into the woods on the night that started it all.
Impossible.
Scott anxiously scrambles with his shirt again, pulling it up to his chest and twisting around to check his side. No bite. His skin is unblemished there. He almost sighs in relief, when he zeroes in on a faint crackling in the distance.
“...dispatching officers to the specified area, keep all units on look out.”
Scott approaches the source slowly, as though in a trance, half of him screaming to just turn around and walk the other direction. A radio lies half buried in the leaves underfoot. Fresh pain lances through his chest as he bends to pick up the device and hold it to his ear, each word that comes through the tinny speaker like a punch to the gut.
“10–54. Suspected location, Beacon Hills Preserve. Possible deceased female, body severed in half.”
The radio fumbles from his shaking hands, and it smashes against a twisted tree root, broken to bits.
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Scott flies through the trees, air whistling through his battered lungs as he tries to make it on time.
At first, he had been frozen in disbelief. Every possible thought had crossed his racing mind, most terrifyingly: time travel. Two years ago, Scott never would have believed his life would have come to this. But any attempts to rationalise this bizarre situation had flown out of the window when a single thought had occurred to him— Allison.
He had absolutely no idea what the fuck was going on, if he was dead or hallucinating or thrown into some sort of time wormhole, but if there was any possibility that Allison might be driving into town in her mother’s car right now, then Scott could not miss that chance.
He finally runs out into the road, just as headlights come hurtling down towards him. Except this time around, instead of coming to a panicked stop and letting the car merely swerve around, he firmly takes a stand in the middle of its path until it is forced to swerve violently to avoid him and it crashes full force into a tree.
“Shit!” Scott yells as he races to the passenger side of the smoking car. He had been trying to stop it, not destroy it.
Both of the seats are empty of anything but windshield glass when he reaches the front side and he falters to a stop, confusion and panic closing up his throat at the unexplainable sight. How could the car have been driving itself?
“Allison?” He jostles with the locked car door desperately.
“No need to get so worried, Scott. I’m already dead, remember?”
He whirls around, not daring to believe it. Allison stands before him, smiling cheerily, completely unscathed. She is wearing the clothes she was in when she died, but her shirt is clean of the blood that had stained her abdomen in her final minutes.
Her lips quirk up at his visible astonishment. “It takes more than a car crash to take me out these days.”
Scott is at her side before he knows it, hand hovering hesitantly over hers.
“Are you…real?” he breathes.
A graveness falls over her face. “As real as you want me to be.”
He frowns at the non–answer. “Is this real?”
“Is anything?” she counters.
When he doesn’t reply, she strokes his cheek gently. “You know, you really shouldn’t be here, Scott.”
“Where is ‘here’? Am I dead? Is this the afterlife?”
Allison laughs, cheeriness back all of a sudden. “Well, let’s go take a look.” She starts walking in the direction of the town, leaving Scott staring after her in perpetual confusion.
She looks back when he doesn’t follow. “Come on! We don’t have all day.”
Scott hurries after her. “We don’t?”
She rolls her eyes light–heartedly. “So many questions. And not even one of them is a simple how are you. You used to be a gentleman, you know.”
He gapes at her, and she chuckles.
“Alright, I’ll go first then. What happened and how did you wind up here?”
Scott blinks slowly. “I died. I guess? I don’t really know. Maybe I’m losing it. Maybe this is all some white light hallucination.”
Allison pauses midstep, considers him somberly. “Maybe.”
“Maybe you’re just a figment of my imagination.”
She shrugs as an answer. “It doesn’t really matter. We’re here because of you, not me.”
“What, so you expect me to just accept the fact that you’re here with no further explanation?”
Allison stares at him silently with the same grave look. Frustration bubbles up inside of him and spills over.
“Don’t I get at least some of the truth? To know whether you’re okay, whether you found peace? Where you ended up?”
She shrinks in a way he’s rarely ever seen before, and guilt washes over him immediately. Her voice is small when she replies.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what this place is. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know how long it’s been. The only thing I know is that I died.”
“Allison…” He trails off with a sigh. Remorse stings in his throat. “I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head lightly. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself.”
“I can’t do that.”
Allison half smiles, exasperated. “I know. That’s why you ended up here, isn’t it? Because you spend more time worrying about everyone else than yourself.”
“No, because I failed. Because I’m not a good alpha, and I’m not a good friend, and I failed everyone.”
“That’s a lot to put on just one person.” Allison hums disapprovingly. “But then again, you’ve always been so stubborn about these things.”
“Says you.”
“Touché.”
They walk silently for a while. Allison is contemplative, and Scott is incredulous. He wonders if this is all a dream, then decides he doesn’t care. He’ll make the most of this while he can, whatever this is.
Allison looks over at him as if he can sense what he’s thinking. “You’re not dead, if that’s what you’re wondering. Close, but not quite.”
He frowns. “How can you tell?”
“You’re…different. I just have this feeling. Like you don’t belong here.”
“I don’t really know where it is I belong anymore.”
“Wherever it is, it’s certainly not here. As much as I’m glad to see you, it isn’t your time yet.”
“It wasn’t yours either!”
“I don’t think it’s up to us to decide,” Allison says sadly.
“So I have to go back?”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe the world would be better off without me.”
She glares at him. “How can you even think that?”
“It’s just—I really messed things up. I trusted the wrong person and now all of the pack is in danger because of me.”
“Right,” Allison says sardonically. “I’m sure that you’re solely to blame and absolutely everyone hates you now.” He shoots her an exasperated look and she sighs heavily. “Scott, my point is that it’s okay! Maybe you made some mistakes; we all do. You can’t say that you’re the only one at fault. Things get tough, we all fuck up one time or another. What matters is what you do to fix it. You taught me that.”
Scott gives her a tired smile. “Thanks, I guess.”
She nods up ahead at the ‘Welcome to Beacon Hills’ sign.
“Where to?”
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Scott goes where he always instinctively will—to Stiles.
The house is silent—just like the whole town is, devoid of anyone except the two of them. The light in Stiles’ window is off. He shifts back and forth on the Stilinski driveway. Allison is patient beside him.
“This is stupid.” Scott breaks the awkward silence. “I mean, he’s not here.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he’s not dead.” The idea of Stiles in a place like this makes him feel a little sick.
“You’re not dead either.”
“So you keep saying. I feel pretty dead, though.”
Allison shrugs. “If you're so sure that he’s not here, why did you come here straight away?”
Scott tilts his head up to the sky, a rivulet of blood seeping out of his heart and down his chest. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Maybe because he’s the person I’ll always need. Maybe because I think I’ve lost him forever. Maybe because he hates me now.”
Allison scoffs. “As if the two of you could ever really hate each other.”
Scott shakes his head. “Not just him. Everyone. I let my pack down.”
Allison is silent for so long that he has to look over and check if she’s still there. “Do you remember the story of Prometheus?” she asks eventually.
Scott scrunches up his nose. “He stole fire from Zeus, right?”
“Yeah, but not for himself. He defied the gods just so that he could give to the humans. And in the end he suffered the consequences.”
“Okay, so what?”
She sighs. “What I’m trying to say is that the world will punish you enough, Scott, without you punishing yourself as well.”
Allison brushes his arm softly, her touch an ice cold feather. He stares at the point where they made contact.
“There’s something I don’t understand. I died and woke up in the woods on the night that started it all. Everything’s the same in this weird ghost town except I wasn’t bitten.” His fingers trace the smooth skin on his side. “I can’t hear or smell like I usually can. I don’t know if it’s because supersenses don’t exist wherever here is, or if I just don’t have those senses anymore. I’ve forgotten what it feels like.”
“To be normal?”
“To be human.”
“Well then, maybe this will give you a chance to remember. When you go back.”
He looks over at her with narrowed eyes. “When?”
“When.” Allison nods solemnly in confirmation.
“Let me guess. You just have a feeling?”
“Maybe it’s fate,” she teases.
Scott half smiles as he recalls those words that feel like a lifetime ago now. “I don’t think I believe in fate anymore.”
“I don’t think I ever did.” Allison sounds like she’s thinking of the same conversation. Right next to each other but universes apart, always.
Scott stares longingly at Stiles’ window. “What am I supposed to do now? How do I find my way back?”
Allison hums. “I’d say you should start with where it is you’re trying to find your way back to.”
He blinks at her. “You’re not coming?”
“I think this is something you need to do yourself.” Sensing his hesitation, she adds, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to fade away into the wind or something.”
She shoos him off. Scott pauses. “How will I know where to find you?”
“Back at the start.”
“I thought that was already where we were.” He frowns, but Allison is no longer listening. Slowly, he starts down the street. At the corner he turns and finds Allison staring up at the sky.
When she doesn’t know he’s looking, she seems to be just as lost as he feels inside.
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The door creaks as he closes it behind him. Where he was trying to find his way back to.
Home.
“Mom?” He calls cautiously, though he isn’t expecting a reply. The house is as quiet as Stiles’s had been— too quiet. Scott aches with longing for his mother, for Stiles, for someone to hold him and tell him he was going to be okay. He digs his nails into his palms to stave off the tears that prick his eyes. For the first time since he woke up, he feels the burn to go back. It would be so easy to just give up right here, but then what would everyone else do? What would Beacon Hills do? Anything could have happened while he hovered between life and death, he realises. Theo could have gone after anyone. He could be tearing out someone else’s heart at this very moment.
Scott has to go back. He has to find a way back, now. He grits his teeth, ignores the throbbing pain in his chest. Moves further into the house, to where he and Stiles always come up with their best plans—standing around his kitchen table, bouncing ideas off of each other, working as two halves of the same whole. Scott leans against the sink and stares across the room at where he thinks Stiles would be monologuing right now, trying to imagine what his plan to literally come back to life would be. Imaginary–Stiles is interrupted by the sound of smashing glass in his living room.
“Mom?” He pushes off the kitchen counter and strides towards the door, willing for her to be there with every step. In the darkness of the living room, he makes out the fuzzy figure of someone on the sofa. He flicks the lamp on and his heart falls out of his chest.
“Dad?”
Rafael McCall looks up at him blearily, a half shattered decanter in his hand.
“You!” He snarls. “What did I tell you, huh? I told you to go back upstairs. Why can’t you ever listen to me?”
Scott had almost forgotten that his father was a mean drunk.
Almost.
“I told you to go back upstairs! Are you even listening to me, you good-for-nothing, useless, waste of space?” Rafe is shouting now, slurring his words. His hand slams down against the table, the noise reverberating through the room. Scott flinches.
“Where’s Mom?” he asks instinctively.
His father’s lip curls. “Always looking to mommy, aren’t you? Like a little baby. You’re just as pathetic as she is.”
Blood rushes in his ears. “Don’t talk about her like that.” (If he focuses, he can faintly hear his mom calling out to him.)
Rafe staggers to his feet and looms over him, swinging the glass in his hand around wildly.
“What are you gonna do about it, huh?” He roars, lurching towards Scott with bloodshot eyes. Scott takes a step back involuntarily. For a moment, he is eight years old again.
The decanter slashes across the arm he had raised in front of himself protectively. Scott might have cried, before, but he refuses to ever cry in front of his father again. He cradles his arm with a slight grimace and examines the gash. It isn’t healing like it usually would, but it isn’t really deep enough to be worried about.
His father crumbles, like he always does when he’s coming down from a drunken episode. He falls silent as he stares at the wound, face twisting in anguish.
“I’m sorry…” Rafe starts to cry softly, taking another step closer, reaching out for Scott. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to.”
He repeats it over and over again, like a mantra.
It is all too predictable. Scott has heard it a thousand times before. He brushes off Rafe, puts a firm distance between them.
His father falls short now. Or perhaps Scott has simply grown taller.
“I know you didn’t mean to,” Scott says quietly, turning to leave. He pauses at the door.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you did.”
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It has never felt so easy to leave. Scott breathes in the cold air of the night.
────────────
He leaves the past behind, refocuses. He can’t stay here, he knows that now. But he can’t leave without saying goodbye to Allison either. Besides, he isn’t sure how he’s supposed to return to the land of the living yet.
Back at the start.
Without even thinking about it, his legs lead him to the school, up the front steps, down the lockers, to room 555 A. His old first period English class, sophomore year, where he’d first met Allison.
Sure enough, she is sitting in her old seat, flippantly examining her nails. She is no longer wearing the clothes she died in but the clothes she was wearing during their first encounter. Perhaps it was up to where they were, or what Scott imagined. Or perhaps the different parts of Allison blended together in this place. The melancholic Allison he’d left behind, searching for something in the sky she could no longer reach. And the Allison in front of him who hadn’t quite reached that point yet.
“Oh, finally,” Allison says brightly as she notices him, waving him over. “I was starting to get bored. In case you hadn't noticed, there’s not much to do around here.”
He breathes a sigh of relief.
“Glad to see me?” she smiles teasingly.
“You have no idea.”
“It didn’t go well, then?”
Scott grimaces. “Not exactly. But I did figure one thing out. You were right. I can still feel my connection to my life. For a moment, I could hear my mom. I think she’s there, I just have to find a way to break through.” Sadness creeps through. “I just wish that you could come with me. I don’t like the idea of you stuck here all alone.”
“I told you to worry about yourself, not me.”
“I can’t help it.”
“I know,” Allison laughs. “You know, you’ve helped me realise something too. Maybe you’re not the only one clinging to the past. I don’t think this place is forever. For a while now, I’ve felt something… waiting for me, something I haven’t had the courage to let in. Like it’s right behind me but my legs are frozen and I can’t quite bring myself to turn around and face the unknown.”
“Sounds a bit like some of the horror movies we used to watch.”
Allison huffs in amusement. “No, I don’t think it’s scary. It always feels… peaceful. I think maybe it’s the place that I need to find my way to.”
“I hope so,” Scott whispers. “I want you to be okay.”
“I will be.” She considers him seriously. “So will you.”
Allison stands then, brushes herself off. Makes her way towards the door.
He calls out to her. “This is goodbye, isn’t it?”
She turns at the front of the class and stares at him from across the room with a tearful smile. She looks so much like the first time he ever saw her that his chest aches—and not because of his wound. Scott wishes he could go back in time and do it all again. He’d do better this time. He knows he would.
“Yeah,” Allison says softly. “For now. But we’ll see each other again, one day.”
She is gone as quick as she came—like trying to hold water in his hands.
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For a while, he stares after her in a daze. Instead of grief, though, he feels strangely at peace. Grateful, more than anything, to see her one last time.
When the dust settles, there is nothing left to do except pick himself back up and keep going. There never has been.
The library is still, blueness illuminated only by the pale moonlight above. He is right back where he started. Scott stares at the steps where he had felt his life leave him. They are undisturbed, clean of his blood. Just like his side.
“Maybe this is how it could have been,” Scott murmurs to himself. “If I had just stayed home that night. I might never have been bitten. I might have been living a normal life. It might have been some other kid in my place.”
“Don’t lie to yourself, Scott.” It comes from behind him and he stills as he recognises that voice. He turns slowly.
“You could never pass that onto someone else, anymore than you could have sunk your claws into my chest.” Theo is smiling at him, but it’s not the same Theo who just killed him. His hair is a little shorter, his eyes a little younger. He looks a little more like the Theo from third grade recess and after school play dates.
He still cuts through Scott in the same way, though.
“Want to know why? Because you’re a martyr,” Theo hisses. “Because you can’t function without that weight on your shoulders. Not really. Not anymore. You’re too far gone to turn back from this life now.” He trails forward. “You know, your lack of self– preservation astounds me. And it will be your undoing.”
“Probably,” Scott shrugs. “But your overabundance of it will be yours.”
“Oh, is that so?” Theo grins coldly. “What does that make us, then? Mirrors?”
“Depends on where you’re standing.”
“Hmm,” Theo scoffs. He seems a little less sure of himself now.
“You’re right. I couldn’t have done the same to you. That doesn’t have to mean I’m a failure, the same way it doesn’t have to mean you aren’t.”
Theo falters, uncertainty flashing across his face. “I’m not a failure.”
“You don’t have to be.”
Theo hesitates. “Why aren’t you scared anymore?”
“I didn’t know where I belong. But I remember now.”
(He can hear his mother’s voice clearer now. She is right next to him. Hazy memories flicker through his mind, of cosy mornings and home cooked meals and ‘I love yous’ whispered into the crown of his head.
She reaches for him, and he takes her hand.)
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Scott opens his eyes and roars.