Warnings: Mentions of injuries and blood, an ableist slur
Even 10 years later and Erica, clear as day still remembered the first scar she ever got.
O.k. maybe not the events leading up to it, as it coincided with her first seizure. But the aftermath was something she'd never forget.
The pure fear that had coursed through her small body at being surrounded by unknown people in a strange place. Her mother's familiar face made almost unrecognizable by her frantic crying.
Erica was sent home from the hospital the next day with six stitches to her chin and an assortment of pills she'd never truly get used to.
Chicken pox and bike collision road rashes followed. At age 8, ten stitches to her behind and a tetanus shot after she slid down a hill across the street from her house. Unlike the older kids in the neighborhood who'd performed the feat safely, she had happened upon the patch of ground that held hidden chunks glass that'd sent her screaming and bleeding back towards home.
Erica spent her young childhood accumulating scars, trying to chase after the normalcy that always seemed just out of reach.
Those had only been the beginning, though, and were superficial compared to the ones that nobody saw. The injuries that cut deep. That oozed and bled and took forever before the healing kicked in… if it ever really did.
"Gross, I don't want your retard card." Jimmy Taylor shouted at the top of his lungs in sixth grade. Tossing the Valentine Erica had stayed up all night making, in the trash as his friends cackled.
It'd sliced and burned and occasionally still pulsed if Erica thought about it too much.
The snickers and sneers that'd followed her down the hall on her first day of high school. Like she had needed something else added to the complete mortification of her unfashionable clothes and terror that all the stress would trigger a seizure.
Over the next couple of years it'd only gotten worse…
The fiery flush of embarrassment caused by Lydia Martin's eye roll at being paired with Erica during class.
Or her ridiculous and completely dismissed crush on Stiles Stilinski.
One after another, all leading up to the video of her seizure. The horrid video with its thousands of hits and disgusting, mocking comments that had Erica begging and pleading with her parents…
"Just let me switch schools or do home school. Anything but this. Please."
That wound had refused to even scab.
Gashes upon gashes. If they were all visible, she'd look like something out of a monster movie.
Monster.
The thought caused a sharp laugh to escape Erica as she stood, bathed in morning light in front of her bedroom mirror. Her hand anxiously twitching to lift the hem of the night shirt she wore.
"It's a gift." Derek had said.
Erica flipped up the cotton material, shaking due to the panic of it all being a dream, rather than fear of it being a reality.
The skin of her waist was soft and warm to the touch. Even more importantly…unmarred. No mark, no damage.
The bite was a gift.
Assurance to Erica that there would be no more lasting blemishes and finally the help she needed to start healing the scars that still remained.