Chapter Text
It’s been a week.
Since Peter Hale and Kate Argent were killed.
It had been two months.
Since Theo ended up in the past.
It itched. It itched like bugs under his skin and dirt under his nails. Theo was something so other, not only in what he was created to be, but also fundamentally. He would never fit in. He understood things in a way that no one could ever understand. He was separate, different, fucked.
Theo Raeken was surrounding himself with ghosts.
Ghosts that felt so real.
He’d tried to change things. He had tried to make it better.
He had made it worse. He knew he had.
Theo had arrived in Beacon Hills with a purpose– he made friends, something he never thought was possible, and he had ended up a bigger failure than he ever thought he could be. He didn’t have anything to lose, but at the same time, he had so much more than he ever had before.
Maybe that’s why it hurt so bad.
It hurt to know that no matter what he tried to do, things would still change in ways he had no precedent for.
Lydia was still comatose.
“The doctors don’t really know why,” Stiles said, sitting in the chairs outside Lydia’s room. Theo sat next to him, his senses tuned into Lydia’s breathing and heartbeat. “But she’s in a coma. The wound healed much faster than they expected, though.”
Theo’s head whipped towards Stiles, confused. Lydia didn’t have enhanced healing– Banshees didn’t get those kinds of abilities, even if Lydia would have wished for it. “What?”
Stiles nodded. “Do you think she’s–” he paused to whisper– “turning?”
“I don’t…” Theo trailed off. She was changing, turning into something different, something she was always meant to be. “Maybe. If she is, we should keep an eye on her.”
“Well, I’m here every day after school,” Stiles declared, his arms crossed over his chest.
Theo could see the heavy under-eye bags that darkened Stiles’ face. The boy wasn’t sleeping, something that Theo was familiar with seeing on Stiles’ face, though it had become a rarity over the last few weeks.
Being in the past was a trip, not only mentally, but also physically. Theo’s body was different from how he remembered it being, and those around him weren’t the same as they had been. Stiles was gangly– he hadn’t grown into his limbs yet, and his eyes looked just a bit too big for his head. It was different from the confident adult that Theo was well-acquainted with.
It was different, but it had become familiar.
This version of Stiles, the innocent one, was something that Theo understood. Now, looking at the eyebags and the peeled cuticles, Theo was sure that something about Stiles had changed. Whether it was the aftermath of being held hostage by Kate Argent, seeing not one, but two dead bodies, or watching blood pour from Lydia’s body, it didn’t matter. Stiles was different from what he had been in mid-January, when Theo had arrived in Beacon Hills.
It was nearly March.
Theo’s phone rang, the simple ringtone that came with the damn thing.
He flipped it open to answer, standing outside of the vet clinic as his closing shift ended. The place had been locked up, and Theo stood under the street lamp, waiting for a series of cars to finish passing so he could run off into the woods.
“What.”
Scott’s voice eeked out of the tinny speaker. “Is that seriously how you answer the phone?”
“Yes,” Theo responded, rolling his eyes as he shoved his free hand into the pocket of the hoodie he’d liberated from the school’s lost and found. “What do you need, Scott?”
There was a moment of silence– the last car whipped past, and the road was in stillness yet again. The faint rustle of a raccoon in the distance caused Theo’s head to whirl towards the sound.
“Allison has a message for you.”
Theo’s eyes slipped shut. She hadn’t spoken to him since that night. It stung, it did. He had thought they were friends. She had called him in a moment of terror. She had trusted him. She trusted him, and he stood there while her aunt was slaughtered.
He wishes he could feel bad for letting Kate die like that.
He can’t.
He does feel bad for making Allison wonder if he cared about her.
Theo cared for Allison like– Like she was someone he’d been missing his whole life.
“Okay.” Theo exhaled, his breath visible in the cold air.
Scott sighed, his breath crunching over the speaker. “You guys should talk. I hate being the middleman for everything.”
“I’m giving her space,” Theo explained. He didn’t want to fight with her. It might be his last straw if she called him a monster. He couldn’t hear that.
“What if she doesn't need space?”
“Her aunt just died, Scott. She needs space.” Theo turned away from the street lamp and started walking in the direction of the preserve. The cold was settling in his skin, chilling everything like frost on a windowpane. “Now, what did she want you to tell me?”
“Right,” Scott said, recalling exactly why he had called Theo in the first place. “She said her grandfather was coming to Beacon Hills for Kate’s funeral and is planning on staying for a while.”
The cold didn’t matter anymore.
Nothing mattered anymore.
Gerard Argent was coming.
Nothing was safe– No one was safe. Theo had never felt colder.
“Scott. You need to make sure you never talk to that man alone, do you hear me?” Theo was sure his voice was shaky but serious. “If you thought Kate was dangerous, then Gerard is the Devil.”
All he could hear was Scott’s breaths over the phone.
“Okay.”
Derek Hale was surprisingly easy to find nowadays. His new job at the auto shop made perfect sense to Theo. Derek could fix cars like it was nobody’s business. Gears were probably more predictable than human emotions.
Theo had run there from the vet clinic, the cold of winter biting his fingers and toes until they felt numb.
“It’s late,” Derek said, his legs the only thing visible under the body of the sports car he was working on. “What are you doing here, Theo?”
Theo didn’t have the heart to tell him immediately. He could at least pretend like he wasn’t here to deliver earth-shattering news.
“Came to say ‘hi,’” Theo said, finding a chair that wasn’t covered in oily gears or rags to sit on. “How’s life treating you?”
“It’s been a week.”
Theo shrugged, knowing that Derek couldn’t see him, but the motions of normality helped with the short-lived ruse. “Okay, and? You got a job, that’s nice. Tell me about that.”
Derek pushed his way out from under the car, the creeper’s wheels screeching under him. “It’s a good job, pays well. I’ll have an apartment in a month or so.”
“Where are you staying now?” Theo asked.
Derek sat up, shooting Theo a raised eyebrow and a frown. “Where are you staying now?”
“Touché.”
Theo watched in silence as Derek stood, walking to the pile of rags and grabbing one. He wiped the grime off his arms and hands, smearing it further instead of properly cleaning it. Theo supposed that was kind of the point, as Derek grunted in acceptance and put down the rag, moving to put his tools away.
“So, what did you really come here for?”
“I can’t just want to see how you’re doing?” Theo asked, keeping a bit of levity in his voice.
Derek did not hold back on the sharp look he shot Theo. “I’m trying so hard to leave everything that happened in February behind me. I want to be normal. Are you going to ruin that for me?” Derek asked, his voice steady, but the question at the end was a genuine one.
Theo sighed. He didn’t want to ruin anything. In fact, all Theo wanted to do was keep Derek safe. There was never going to be a world in which Derek Hale got to be ‘normal.’ There was no normal in their world. Derek should know that by now.
“Gerard Argent is on his way to town,” Theo said, leaving all pretence of normality behind him. “He’s going to want revenge for her death.” He wasn’t petty enough to say her name, not when the last name ‘Argent’ made Derek visibly shudder.
Derek shook his head. “I heard Gerard followed the Code.”
“He follows the code the way we breathe underwater, Derek.” Theo stood, his arms by his side. He didn’t want to fight, but the seriousness of this was thick in the air, easy to confuse with anger. “You need to be careful. More careful than you’ve ever been in your life. Change your name, if you can.”
He watched as Derek’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “I’m being serious,” Theo continued. “Hale is a last name that holds a lot. I know that. But it holds a lot to you and to them. You need to be so far under their radar that, no matter how long they dig, they’ll never find you. Gerard is serious; he’s dangerous. I know you don’t trust me, Derek, but you need to believe me.”
Derek’s eyebrows relaxed the more Theo spoke, replaced by full-body tension and fear. “I do trust you, Theo. After everything you did for me, I trust you.”
W–
What?
Theo had not– He’d never have expected that. Most of his conversations with Derek were straightforward.
This– This was not straightforward. Theo’s skin was on fire. The heart in his chest was bursting into a million small pieces. He couldn’t hear, he couldn’t see, he was–
Fine. This was fine.
“Get off the radar, Derek.” Theo turned, walking out of the garage before he shattered.
It had been two days since Theo found out that Gerard was on his way to town.
Two days since ‘I do trust you, Theo.’
Two days since ‘What if she doesn’t need space?’
It felt like forever. He was just waiting. Watching and waiting.
It felt like forever, but it also felt like a snap of his fingers.
He woke up in a bed for the first time in… a while. Theo got dressed in freshly laundered clothes. He walked downstairs and grabbed food out of a fridge. It all felt like a dream.
Until it was a nightmare.
Corey entered, side-eyeing Theo with a low, “Hmm.”
Theo had told Corey the second he found out that Gerard was coming. Corey had, understandably, been nervous, yelling at Theo to get the hell out of dodge.
Theo refused.
Corey had said, verbatim, “Well, you can’t keep living in the woods. That’s a sure-fire way to get your ass cut in half.”
So, Theo lived in Corey’s guest bedroom. Corey had said his parents were going to be away for the next couple of weeks, so until they returned, Theo was welcome to stay.
He sure didn’t feel welcome.
Corey was still holding a grudge. Theo had failed to do the one thing he’d promised Corey: keep Peter safe. The man who had helped raise him was dead, and Corey Bryant blamed Theo.
Theo blamed himself too. He could have done more. The month of February had been a mess. Theo thought that he’d understood exactly what needed to be done to save everyone. He was wrong. He didn’t understand anything.
He had failed, and it was fair for Corey to blame him.
Theo made eggs for breakfast, leaving some outside Corey’s room. He barely saw the kid, so how else was Theo supposed to know if he was eating? Corey, the older one that Theo had known, had loved Theo’s eggs and said they were the right amount of runny. It was the least Theo could do.
Theo sighed, flopping down on the guest bed that was now his. He had a lot to make up for with Corey. He thought he’d do it by saving Peter, but now– Now he had two failures to atone for.
A piercing sound split through the air, through Theo’s head and into his thoughts. It was familiar. It was hair-raising. It was Lydia.
He sat up, his eyes wide and his body moving before he could think.
Corey was in the hallway, the plate of eggs in his hand, his head lifted, and his eyes narrowed. “What was that?”
“Lydia.”
They arrived at the hospital having only broken a handful of traffic laws. Corey had let Theo drive, stating that, ‘at least, if you get arrested, your parents won’t kill you.’
Theo had missed this snappy and vengeful Corey. It felt much more routine than the way Theo had to interact with everyone else; as if he was stepping over the corpses of who they would become.
Stiles and Jackson were standing outside the entrance to the hospital building. Jackson looked panicked, his eyes darting back and forth as Stiles talked on the phone, his body language and volume betraying the worry.
Theo pulled the car in next to them, climbing out and locking the door, trapping Corey in the car for at least the 30 seconds it would take for him to realise. “Where’s Lydia?” Theo began, quickly interrupted by both Jackson and Stiles speaking at once.
“She just woke up–”
“–window’s open–”
“–yelling about hair–”
“–gone.”
Theo didn’t have the energy for trying to separate their stories, especially as Corey exited the car and crossed his arms, glaring at Theo with the anger of a teenager spited.
“Also, who is this guy?” Stiles cried, his hands flailing with uncontained tension. “You can’t just show up with a new guy and expect that to be fine. We don’t know him. How do we know he’s, like, safe?”
Corey raised an eyebrow. “Informant,” Corey stated, pointing at himself, his neutral expression as hard as rock.
“Oh great,” Stiles sighed. “Another douche to deal with. I should be getting a medal, an award, a Nobel Peace Prize.”
“Lydia,” Theo redirected. “What happened? And one at a time, please. You’re not in the fucking third grade.”
Stiles began. “She woke up like an hour ago, started yelling at us for letting her hair look this bad, went to take a shower, screamed like there was no tomorrow, and then went missing.”
Theo pointed at Jackson. “Go.”
“The bathroom window was open. It would have been a tight fit, but she could have climbed out. It was on the first floor, so it wouldn’t be crazy. But everything else Stiles said was right.”
There were so many questions, most of them unnecessary to the current situation. Where were Scott and Allison? Theo assumed that was who Stiles had been on the phone with, but if so, why weren’t they here? And Lydia… was this a Banshee thing? Was this an awakening of her powers?
Theo exhaled, his skin thrumming with the feeling of finally being able to do something. “Corey–” Theo tossed the teen his flip phone– “call Derek; if he doesn’t answer, text him. Let him know what’s going on. Stiles and Jackson, you’ve called Scott and Allison, right?”
Stiles nodded. “They’re on their way here.”
“Okay, call them back, tell them to go straight to the Preserve and start searching there. Scott might be able to pick up a scent. You two go and join them; it’s gonna get cold tonight, and she probably isn’t dressed for the temperatures. Sunset is around 6 pm. We need to find her before then.”
“What are you going to do?” Stiles asked as Corey flipped open Theo’s phone and got to work. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you totally excluded yourself from all of this.”
Theo sighed. “I know someone who might know something about this. I’m going to go talk to them, see if they might be able to help.”
Jackson, who had been halfway into the Jeep’s passenger seat, popped out. “If this is going to be another ‘secret informant’ thing, please tell us now. It was weird last time, no offence,” he aimed the last statement at Corey, who shrugged to indicate no offence taken.
“It might be,” Theo said, sighing at the sheer amount of things he’d have to share eventually. “But right now, no.”
The vet clinic was quiet on Fridays, so Theo didn’t feel too bad about marching in and cornering Deaton in the back room.
“What do you know about Banshees?” Theo asked.
The Doctors didn’t see Banshees as being helpful. They’d tried to make one once– it hadn’t turned out well, the poor girl going insane with the visions of terror. Theo shuddered, remembering the way the foundation shook as she screamed through her own death. Any research on the Wailing Women was unpredictable, especially when it came to their ‘birth.’
Deaton didn’t even turn on his stool, his eyes glued to the microscope. “Does this have anything to do with the scream from earlier?”
Theo shrugged. Giving too much information to Deaton upfront didn’t seem smart. While Theo worked for the man, he found that Deaton lost interest in things once they stopped being a mystery, leaving Theo to work on treatment plans for pets while Deaton diagnosed them.
Theo couldn’t let himself be anything less than a mystery to the druid.
“Well,” Deaton began. “I’ve only ever known a few–”
“I need to know what happens when they ‘emerge,’” Theo interrupted. He knew how their abilities were connected to death, and he didn’t need the entire dictionary definition of Banshee. He needed to know what was happening to Lydia right now.
Deaton hummed under his breath and then sighed, turning his stool so he could face Theo properly. “Banshees are awoken by a close call with death. They are brought so close to the afterlife that a part of their soul stays there, connected to it forever.” Deaton stood, starting to walk around the back room as he spoke, his hands gesticulating to emphasise certain aspects of his explanation. “So, when they are awoken, or ‘emerge’ as you called it, they are still stuck half in our world and half in the next; In-Between. They usually wander, unsure where they are or what realm they are in, until a death in our world triggers them to scream. It can return them to our world.”
“Can?” Theo asked, needing to know every specific.
“Well, the death has to be close enough, either location-wise or emotionally, to the Banshee to trigger the scream. That is an incredibly specific circumstance. Oftentimes, Banshees are considered to be brain dead or mentally ill and–”
Theo had heard enough. He didn’t want to think about– He had enough information.
“So to pull them from the In-Between, they need to be triggered to scream?” He needed to make sure he understood exactly what Deaton was saying. Lydia depended on it, and Theo was not going to let her down again.
Deaton nodded, sitting back down on his stool.
Right, so Theo needed to either trigger a death, aka kill someone, or… Well, he’d figure it out. It couldn't be hard in Beacon Hills. He turned, ready to leave, create a plan, and enact it.
“But Theo,” Deaton called, pulling Theo from his thoughts. “There is another way to pull a Banshee from the In-Between.”
He turned back around, an eyebrow raised. This is why Theo would never truly trust the druid. Deaton never led with the simplest answer; everything was a test, an experiment to him. It reminded Theo too much of the Doctors.
“It is the same as with werewolves, reminding them of their humanity. If you can anchor them to this world, they can pull away from the spirit world. It is often harder, though, as you’ll need to find the thing that will keep them human without their help.”
Theo didn’t say anything to this, his mind already working through possible solutions. Death or humanity. It was the two sides of the Banshee. If he brought her back with death, would she slip further down later in life? If he brought her back with humanity, would she lose that connection to the spirit world?
It wasn’t a hard decision.