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Theo wakes up to someone nudging him. There's something pulsing angrily behind his eyes, and he groans as he tries to blink it away.
"Tell him to shut the fuck up, will you?" someone hisses. It doesn't take long to guess it's Stiles.
He can smell the spike in Liam's emotions as he sighs next to Theo. It takes another moment to notice that he hadn't realized Liam was there -- Just instinctually knew from the soft honey and cherry smell underlying the wolfsbane and blood.
"What's happening?" Theo mutters. He blinks the clouds out of his eyes to find Malia chained up across from him with Stiles in a similar state next to her. They're all on the floor with their hands secured to the wall behind them, shoulder to shoulder and just a few feet between their legs. Malia has her knees up close by her chest and Theo's feet were just a couple inches away from where he had woken up with them outstretched.
"We're kidnapped, what the fuck do you think?" Stiles bites out.
"Oh, joy, I've always wanted to be stuck in a tiny box with my three least favourite people in the world," Theo bitches back.
Liam turns to him and Theo can just barely see him frown out of the corner of his eye. "I'm one of your least favourite people?" Theo wants to bite something when he sounds genuinely hurt.
"Obviously not," Malia says with a roll of her eyes. "He wouldn't drive you around everywhere if you were. He's just being rude."
Theo makes a face at her. "Whatever. What do we know about the guys who caught us?"
"They're psychopaths who want to sell us to a supernatural fighting ring or something," Stiles says. "They've come in to give us food and water a couple times already."
"Okay," Theo murmurs to himself. "We can work with that."
"We're somewhere between Oregon and Washington I think," Malia says. "They've been talking about taking us to Canada."
That's a little less good. "Do they work in shifts?" Theo asks.
She shakes her head. "We stop at night for them to sleep. But they do leave one or two people to deal with us."
Theo works his jaw. "Okay. I think I have a plan."
"Already?" Stiles asks.
"They don't seem super organized. We might have to figure some things out as we go but we want to get out of here as soon as possible before we get to the final destination. Shit gets a lot harder after that."
"Well since I'm sure you'd know all about kidnapping, whatever you say," Stiles says bitterly.
Liam makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds dangerously close to a growl. It has Stiles looking at him incredulously and Theo elbowing him hard.
"Save it for later, Liam. And yeah, sure, I do know. So shut the fuck up and listen, will you?"
Theo is nine the first time he's kidnapped.
He doesn't realize for a long time. Not until he's out. For many, many long years, when he thinks of how he got to where he is with his shackled wrists and muzzled face and frankenstein heart, he thinks of how he chose this life.
Sometimes, he curses his nine-year-old self for being such a naive, trusting idiot. He curses and he screams and he begs, but nothing ever comes from it.
Other times he praises his nine-year-old self for being the reason he's still alive at all. When it's quiet and he's back in his cage to lick his wounds and sleep off the Doctors' latest experiment, he curls into himself and listens to the rhythm of his sister's heart and knows that there was never any other way.
It was only ever going to be one of them. His heart had been failing and even though his mother had always said doctors were supposed to make him feel better, the ever increasing visits were only making him feel worse.
The Doctors were different, though. They lit Theo's way not necessarily of a better future, but a future at all.
Nine year olds are very drawn to bright, sparkling promises that blind them from the shadows in the dark, he finds out.
Theo is nine the first time he is kidnapped, but he doesn't realize it for a long, long time until there's enough light in his life for him to realize there's shadows again in place of all consuming darkness.
Theo is fourteen the first time he realizes he is kidnapped.
He has a shiny gun pointed at his forehead as the light reflecting off it makes shadows around the room.
He was supposed to slip in and drug their supplies without them noticing. It wasn't his first task like that, and it won't be his last.
There have been times when he's looked back and wished it was.
But for now he's staring down the barrel of a gun and sweating bullets as he tries to think his way out of this one.
"Little mutt lost his way?" one of the hunters croons. The word mutt stings in a way Theo doesn't think she meant.
"Poor little puppy's shaking in his boots," another one spits. They all cackle, and Theo really does shiver.
"So, pup, which pack are you from? The one over the border that we burnt to a crisp, or the McAllistor pack down south?"
"Neither," he bites out. The hunters laugh when his bite's too weak and his words shake.
They make it a game to see who can scare him most. He plays along, pulling out the most pitiful and pathetic faces he can muster, and slowly but surely works the guy with the gun up enough that he waves it around in the air.
Theo lunges for the gun.
This is not the first time Theo's killed, and it certainly won't be the last. It is, however, the first time he kills someone without it being a direct order from the Doctors.
It's exhilarating.
The first guy has a bullet between his eyes in seconds. The second woman has a bullet through her heart in a few more. The third has enough time to reach for her gun, but not enough to pull it out before there's a bullet tearing through her shoulder. The fourth fires her gun, but Theo's quicker and slips real close with his hands by her neck before she snaps and falls to the ground.
He stands there for a moment, breathless and shaking, until hunter number three pulls out a knife and lunges for Theo.
He steps back and watches her stagger to her feet, curious to see what she'll do next. Is this how the Doctors feel every time they stick him in another death trap just to see how he'll get out?
It's a game of cat and mouse that Theo grows bored of very quickly. The woman is an idiot, scrambling after him lethargically after every miss. Theo can count a dozen items she could use to save herself, but she uses none. Instead, she chases him until the blood catches her and she goes down.
Theo even crouches down next to her and notes her symptoms until there aren't any. He's still covered in blood when he walks in on The Doctors. All three turn to him in sync.
"Well? Where are they?" The Surgeon asks.
Theo's smile falters. "Dead."
The Geneticist turns back to her work and ignores the other three in the room as The Surgeon and The Pathologist stand like shadows.
"So you failed?" The Surgeon asks in confirmation.
Heat flares in Theo's cheeks, chasing all the feeling out of his body. He starts sweating, underarms itchy, forehead tickling. The hair on the back of his neck feel like they're being electrocuted.
"No! They're- They were going to kill me!"
"You failed to capture any alive," The Surgeon says. "They had valuable information, now lost."
"Termination?" The Pathologist asks.
Theo's blood runs cold.
"He has otherwise proved useful until now. Correct his behaviour and monitor him before reassessing," The Surgeon says instead.
Theo spits blood and curses all night long.
They hadn't taken Theo's shoes when they hit Theo with wolfsbane and loaded him into the truck. It means that he can dislocate his thumb to pull his hand free and grab the lockpicks there to free the others.
They also hadn't taken his jacket. He uses it to strangle the guy bringing them food and water, not stopping until well after he stops twitching and his heart goes quiet.
He stalks out silently with the others behind him and snaps a neck when they walk into someone in the hall outside. He takes the gun and uses it to pistol whip another so hard he drops to the ground with a bloodied brain and no pulse.
Someone hears the body go down and that's when more start coming in. Malia and Liam take on anyone who gets too close, but Theo can still smell the wolfsbane on them and see it in their sluggish hits. Stiles picks up a gun and does a number on whoever he can reach, but he's in a bad position behind Theo and can only do so much.
Theo, though, has a sniper's wet dream. Coverage to block the incoming bullets and a lovely view that doesn't obstruct his aim. He puts bullet after bullet in head after head until all he's staring at is a pile of bodies.
"Christ," Stiles mutters as they all stumble out. Theo can smell a flurry of emotions on him -- Relief at still being alive, disgust at all the bodies, anxiety at what's left to come. He doesn't sound particularly upset, just in shock, so Theo doesn't hold it against him when he says, "Talk about trigger happy."
Theo is thirteen when he learns how to shoot a gun.
He knows the basics already. The hunters help him when he stumbles into their camp like a baby deer on new legs shaking and crying as he tells one of them about the monster that killed his parents.
They let him stick around. One of them has been groomed for this since birth and has never had time for anything else. One of them is a paranoid shut-in, only in this to eradicate the beasts that haunt them. One of them thinks they were better off shooting Theo in the head because he’s only a drain on supplies.
One of them used to have a daughter only thirteen years old.
He doesn’t let himself sleep, citing the monsters that come at night. He doesn’t let himself eat, citing the grief that eats at him. He doesn’t let himself relax, citing the constant danger on the hunt to kill them all.
“It’s alright, kid, no more monsters are going to hurt you as long as I’m alive.”
Theo looks up into the eyes of this childless father and bursts into tears.
He doesn’t know that it’s not Theo he should be worrying about. Not like that, anyway.
He takes Theo under his wing that night, letting him sit between his side and arm in front of the fire as Theo finally sleeps. He takes to showing Theo a plethora of defensive maneuvers, some of which Theo didn’t even have to pretend to not know. He sits Theo down and makes him take apart and rebuild a gun until he can do it with his eyes closed. He takes Theo out into the woods and chuckles when Theo flinches at the sound of a bullet being shot before teaching him everything he knows.
“You remind me of my daughter,” he says one night. “Elena.”
Over the months he gains a son.
He teaches Theo how to shoot a gun with unnerving accuracy. He puts Theo behind the wheel of his 2008 Toyota Tundra and tells him not to crash. He shows Theo how to make some of his favourite dishes, even when Theo manages to horrifically burn the pork and taco shells his first time in the kitchen.
He claps Theo on the back afterward every time, even when he’s staring at a scratch on his truck or is eating char and says, “Good job, kid. I’m proud of you.”
In the dead of night sometimes when Theo really can’t sleep, he’ll wonder. What would happen if he told them all about the Doctors? Would they be enough to stop them? Would they cast Theo aside and spit words like ‘traitor’ at him? Would they put a bullet through Theo’s head without a second thought?
But then the paranoid shut-in starts hearing scratching and threatening promises whispered into the night. The one that had wanted Theo dead goes missing. The hunter groomed from birth is found with his throat slit.
The daughterless father holds a gun to the paranoid shut-in as he stands shaking with bloodied hands.
“It was him!” the paranoid shut-in screams. “It’s been him all along! Everyone, every thing, all him!”
Theo sobs behind the man who loves him like a son. “He’s going to kill me,” Theo pleads, “I don’t want to die,” he says through tears.
The daughterless father shoots. He turns around to comfort his son and is met with a gun.
There was only one liar, and it hadn’t been the dead man.
Theo holds the gun out in front of him and tries to stop his hands from shaking.
“Kid?”
Theo can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. He says the first truth since he stepped foot into the hunters’ camp all those months ago. “I’m sorry.”
The daughterless father looks at Theo with wet eyes. “I loved you.”
“And you were an idiot for it,” Theo spits. He still can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. “You’ll die for it,” he chokes out.
The childless father stares at the claws that tear their way through Theo’s finger tips like murder. “I loved you,” he says again, hollow and angry and empty and furious.
“You’re not even going to fight?” Theo yells when the childless father doesn’t move. His fangs come out as he snarls, loses his grasp on control when the blood drenching his hands slickens the hold, but he doesn’t flinch.
“Am I supposed to?”
The soft sound of scratching fills Theo’s ears. It shifts to something whirring mechanically, and Theo’s hands shake for another reason.
He looks at the corpse behind the father that had once called himself Theo’s. His eyes shift to the man standing in front of him as his mind shifts to the man in his past.
Theo and the daughterless father are the last ones sitting around the fire. Theo has his first beer in his hands that one of them pushed into his hands after he shot his first deer.
It’s the night he learns about Elena — about her smile, about her laugh, about her first steps, her first haircut, her first day of school. Many days later as Theo stands with a gun in his hands he will wonder if the man in front of him had cherished those firsts of Theo’s — and it’s the first time he sees the daughterless father lose the pride in his posture.
There will only be one other time he sees it, and it’s now as he holds the gun.
The same gun a father gave his son.
It is too late. The others are dead and the childless father stands in front of him once more.
Theo pulls the trigger and flinches at the sound for the first time in months. He spends their last night together much like their first, sobbing inconsolably.
He gingerly takes the jacket off the childless father’s body and wears it for years to come. He takes the keys to his truck and drives it for years to come. He takes the locket and throws the sister he never met into a river and thinks of her for years to come.
He tracks down the latest monster the group had been hunting with no pride. He takes it down and drags the Doctors’ precious target back with no pride. He lays in his cage and wonders if everything he’s done in his life is worth it; he ponders the pride of it all.
He’s never been so glad for the Doctors’ ability to torture the memories right out of his head.
There’s more hunters outside. Theo’s senses aren’t as sharp as they usually are so it isn’t until pain explodes through his shoulder that they find out the hard way.
Theo is sick and fucking tired of this shit. He snarls through the pain and lands a bullet through every pair of eyes he can see.
Another bullet to the thigh sends him reeling back and stumbling to the ground. Malia and Liam pull him back behind cover as Stiles peeks out, shooting where he can until they hear another car pull up.
“Shit!” Liam yells as they hear door slams. He pulls Theo farther back as Malia slides next to Stiles and gets ready to take a few hits.
Stiles pulls back and swears underneath his breath. “I’m out of bullets.”
When the next bullet rings out though, it’s not toward them. Malia pokes her head out and laughs, half in shock. “It’s Scott and Argent!”
Malia and Stiles jump out to help them take care of the last few hunters. Liam stays behind, helping Theo into a more comfortable position as the wolfsbane starts to kick in.
“Gimme your shirt,” Theo says. “I need something to stop the bleeding.”
Liam obliges, up until Theo starts ripping his shirt into strips. He ignores Liam’s protests as he ties tourniquettes around his leg and shoulder before getting to work on the bullet in his shoulder. It’s closer to his heart than he’s comfortable with and wants it out before the wolfsbane becomes too much.
Liam shrieks and flings himself back as Theo jams his claws into the meat of his shoulder. The bullet is still whole and comes out fairly easy, but the whole ordeal still has Liam freaking out like a child seeing blood for the first time. Theo rolls his eyes and throws the bullet at him with a smirk before moving onto the one in his thigh.
The squawking has the others rushing over. He hears Stiles make a disgusted noise before Malia is scrambling to catch his unconscious body before it hits the ground. Scott and Argent rush over as Theo hits a bullet shard and pulls it out with a hiss.
“I don’t have a lighter,” he says through gritted teeth. “Once I finish with my leg you guys are going to have to burn the wolfsbane out of it and my arm. I don’t know how much I have left in me.”
Argent frowns but digs out a lighter. “You sure you don’t want to get in the car first?”
Theo pulls another shard out and shakes his head. “I’m already here, may as well finish.” His claws close around another shard just as sweat drips in his eyes and he yanks it out with a heavy grunt, heedless of the flesh he’s tearing through in the process.
“Nope, nope,” Liam mutters as he scrambles away. “I can’t do this. I’ll help get Stiles into the car.”
Theo wipes the sweat out of his face and pauses to watch Liam stumble away. He seems mostly fine, just unsettled and ill from watching Theo dig around in his own flesh like this, and Theo can’t blame him. It was hard for him to stomach the first few times too.
As he pulls another couple of shards out, he can feel himself slipping. “How many pieces can a goddamn bullet turn into?” he mutters to himself.
Scott reaches out and puts two steadying hands on Theo, each pulling some of his pain. “You good?”
Theo half glares at him, and Scott gives a half grimace. “Sorry, I know you don’t like people touching you.” Theo turns back to the bullet shards in his leg without a word, but he’s silently glad when Scott doesn’t move his hands away. He even reaches out to grab at them when the last shard is out and Argent is bringing the lighter toward his skin before he slips into darkness entirely.
Theo is twelve when he almost dies to poison.
It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. Theo’s been with the Doctors long enough to have stopped begging.
This time though, another experiment pulls their attention off Theo. They leave him alone to deal with their emergency, letting the door clang and lock shut behind them.
Theo sits there, content to wait until they come back, until his body starts cramping up. He twists and turns but it only makes him sweat more, body going hot and feverish.
He stumbles away from the table laden with needles and bangs on the door. No one comes, and Theo knows this is just another death trap.
He’s seen the Doctors experimenting with this poison several times across several subjects across several weeks. Enough to have a basic grasp of its effects and remedies. It’s how he knows that if he doesn’t do something, his liver will fail and blood will rush to his head until his eyes explode.
It’s also how he knows to inject only half the antidote or all the blood will rush to his heart and send him into cardiac arrest. The second half comes later, once his pulse and blood pressure have stabilized.
It’s only thanks to the Doctors that he can stay so patient so close to death. They’ve tested him over and over and over again and he’s come clawing back from the brink of death nearly every time. There have been occasions he shudders to think about where they had killed him just to bring him back and observes how he heals from it, but he’s supposed to not panic so he drowns out those memories with the idea of the Doctors finally deeming him ready to go on his own missions, however tight they may pull his leash.
Years later, he’ll make a joke about winning the Guinness World Record for most times resuscitated, and no one will laugh. For now, though, he’s so very alone it makes him hurt when he’s huddled away in his cage on bad nights.
The Doctors come back as he’s throwing his guts up while his head spins from the second shot. He’s not dead, though, which is more than past subjects can say.
“Test successful," the Pathologist says. “Subject properly administered antidote, if not slightly early.”
Theo beams as the Geneticist pats his knee and hands him some water.
Other kids have soccer trophies and pizza parties. Theo thinks that as long as he can keep winning, what he has here is better.
He wakes up in a motel bed, bullet wounds bandaged and half healed. There are voices talking around him that quiet down as he tries to sit up.
“You okay?” Liam asks.
Theo nods and rubs at his eyes. When he opens them again Scott is sitting on the edge of the bed, holding water out for him to take, while Liam sits next to Theo in the full bed with his legs crossed. Theo grabs the water and sips it slowly.
“Up to talking about what happened earlier?” Scott asks tentatively. Theo sighs, puts his cup down, and nods.
Scott takes a moment to look for his words. “Theo, you… You killed a lot of people today–”
But Theo just wants to get this done and fucking over with. “It was us or them. Did you want me to risk one — or all — of us dying for your moral compass?”
“Of course not. But there are ways to go about it without killing people. Incapacitating them–”
“I’m sorry for trying not to die?” Theo yells at him. Everyone in the room tenses up. “I can understand you not being proud of my actions, which, fine, I’m not exactly proud of all of them either, but when the stakes are as high as they were earlier some of us can’t afford to take the noble route. I thought you’d understand after everything with Stiles–”
“And I’m not trying to scold you for what you did. And no, I’m not proud of every action you took, but I’m proud that you got all four of you guys out alive.”
That leaves Theo sort of speechless. Scott? Proud of him?
Past the disbelief, he chokes out, “If you could just tell me what you want me to do or what you expect of me. I can do more shit for you but just running around trying my best — I’m gonna do what I’ve always known until someone tells me otherwise.”
Scott sighs. “We can do that. And– Thank you for telling me that.”
Theo snorts. “What kind of leadership classes have you been taking?”
Scott cringes. “Is it that obvious?”
Theo half shrugs. “A little,” he lies. Liam makes a noncommittal noise that very much sounds like a yes.
“A lot,” Stiles says.
“Very,” Malia confirms.
Argent ignores them. “You’ve come a long way. Keep it up,” he says to Theo.
“He still has a long way to go, thank you,” Stiles says.
“Stiles,” Scott warns.
“I didn’t mean it like that! We just gotta keep the guy humble, you know?” he grumbles. “Whatever, I’m getting tacos. Who’s with me?”
“Get me one with pulled pork, would you?” Theo calls out after him. Malia follows Stiles out the door, telling them all to text Stiles their orders. Or– Scott, because it was Scott’s phone Stiles swiped on the way out on account of them losing their shit when they were kidnapped.
“We are proud of you, though,” Liam says as the quiet settles in again.
“Not all of us!” Malia shouts as the car pulls out of hearing distance.
Liam winces and shrugs. “Enough of us.”
“And you willing to keep trying is a good thing,” Scott says.
Theo chokes up a little as he sits in this puddle of pride, a kind purer than he’s felt in a long time. “Thanks.”
Liam lunges in for a bear hug, and Theo pretends he hates it just for tradition.