LOL. Too many Argent!sibling feels, written at an ungodly hour wishing I could sleep so shhh, just feel the feels. Also I wasn't sure about time lines, woops.

"CHRIS"

A bloody scream pierced through the silence instantly after the gunshot. The young blonde haired man stood there with a look of incredulity as his trembling hand slowly touched his abdomen. He took slow ragged breathes as his light green eyes witnessed the crimson red that dirtied his fingers. Suddenly it was as if his entire life turned into a horribly ironic slow motion scene from a movie. The sound coming off the barrel of the gun ran in his ears until the ringing was replaced with complete silence. He lifted his head meeting eye to eye with his sister who stood in front of him with the gun still raised. In that instant, his knees buckled in before him and the reality of the situation sunk in the instant he hit the cold, damp forest ground. He laid there clutching the gunshot wound, biting back the cries the pain was inducing. He felt his sister come to his side, gathering him up in her arms. He watched as her eyes grew wide with fear and her pretty face twisted into horror while he yelled at him. How did it become like this?

How did they become like this? How did she become like this? How did his sister, his beautiful sister turn into this blood thirsty, hell bent monster? Chris wished he could say he didn't know, but he knew. He knew the reason why suddenly that sparkle in her eye turned into a glaring glint. He knew the reason why the only thing that excited her now was the thrill of the hunt. He knew the reason why she was willing to go to any lengths to get her kill. He knew the reason why, and the worst part was that there was nothing left of his sister he could save. Kate wasn't the same anymore, and she would never be again.

The Kate he knew was consumed by the searing rage and desperate desolation left to her when their mother died.

The fact that they were Argents meant that death followed them wherever they went. The Argents were hunters, people who pursued and killed their prey without hesitation. They were machines, soldiers fighting an eternal war to protect the 'innocent' against monsters who disguised themselves as humans. Children of hunters grew up to be hunters. Chris and Kate knew that they would never know the comfort of a normal life, but that didn't stop them from pretending.

That didn't stop them from going through high school pretending to sympathize with their friends and their 'horrible problems' when their own problem dealt with hunting down creatures people believed only to be myths. That didn't stop them from joining in after school activities and clubs just like everyone else only to come home to excruciating training ran personally by their father. That didn't stop them from joining in the thrill of believing they were going to get out of Beacon Hills after high school knowing full well their duty will forever be here. Knowing who they were and what they were didn't stop them from pretending to be what they could have been, but reality had a way of sinking its claws into those great pretenders and wild dreams pulling them straight down.

As normal as everyone thought Chris and Kate were, there was nothing regular about their mother's death. There was nothing normal about not being able to see their mother for the last time because her body was torn literally to pieces by werewolves. The only normal thing that occurred from their mother's death was the cloud of despair that fell upon the Argent family. Grief and despair rocked the household for days until the funeral, but Chris was the only one that had cried openly. His father held his cold stoic expression and as the three watched her casket lower into the ground, Chris noticed that Kate's face too was void of any emotion. Her green eyes stared into the distance and her jaw was clenched tightly. In that moment Kate and his father looked more alike than they ever did.

That was the moment Chris should have known. He should have known better than to leave Kate alone after that, but he didn't. At twenty-four years old Chris has obviously made stupid choices fueled by young, wild intentions but what he did to Kate wasn't a stupid choice, it was a horrible mistake that he would live with for the rest of his life. His mistake was that he believed she was strong enough to move on like he did. But Kate wasn't like her brother. While Chris worked things out rationally, Kate plowed through things passionately. The death of their mother left her broken into pieces, and like broken pieces of glass her jagged edges were a hazard to everyone. She was too weak to put herself back together, too broken to believe she could be made back into anything with worth. Maybe Chris believed in Kate too much. Maybe Chris was too preoccupied with restoring things to normal that he forgot that they never could be normal. There were a lot of maybes concerning Chris' absence, but that didn't change the fact that Chris wasn't there for Kate like he should have. Instead, where Chris should have been their father, Gerard, stepped in.

Chris' respect for his father was unconditional, he was his son and Gerard was his father. But the amount of love he had for his father paled in comparison to the love he had for his mother. While his father was the brute force example of what a hunter should be like, his mother was the example of intelligence a hunter should have. Chris and his mother were alike in the sense that they thought everything out. They had a rationale for everything. His mother was the one who taught Chris and Kate the code. Hunt those that hunt us. There was to be no killing of innocents, not even young wolves unless they harmed others. The code was the structure that Chris found comfort in. But the comfort Chris found held no meaning to his father and no solace for his sister.

The solace his sister sought, Chris eventually found, held no structure at all. The comfort she found was primal. She needed to hear those werewolves scream and she needed to see the life drain out of those vicious monsters. It didn't matter if they were innocent, they just needed to have claws and howl.

"Kate what were you thinking?"

"What do you mean what was I thinking? You failed to shoot so I did."

"They were innocent Kate. That hunt was uncalled for."

"Innocent? Says the boy who shot his best friend in the head because he was a wolf."

"I shot him because he tried to kill me."

"Well, they tried to kill mom, and guess what. They did"

It was that conversation that had made Chris see Kate for the first time. Not the Kate he knew as his sister, no the Kate that was put together by their father. It was in that moment that Chris finally saw the cracks within her. All the pieces that he should have helped put back together one by one, but instead the pieces that their father forced together under an iron fist. He had watched her toss her hair back with a slight scoff before tending to her guns. When did she become so fascinated with guns? The only weapon she's felt comfortable with the last time Chris could remember were knives because they didn't do as much damage unless necessary. When did she suddenly hold herself in the way that she did? When did her eyes suddenly become as cold as their father's. As the amount of questions began flooding Chris' head, the more he realized he knew the answer to all of them. All of Kate's changes weren't sudden. No, they happened over a painfully drawn out period. It happened over a period that Chris ignored.

It was then Chris came to the realization that he couldn't ignore Kate anymore. He couldn't pretend that she had gotten better. That desperation that latched onto her a year ago when their mother died didn't disappear. No, it leeched onto her sucking not only her hope but her humanity.

He had watched her in the best way that he knew and that was going on hunts with her. Often the hunts were justified, and if they weren't Kate found a reason to 'justify' them herself so she could pretend that she was following the code, but she never cared. That was the wedge that continued to separate Chris and Kate. She didn't care. Innocent or not werewolves were werewolves. She craved delivering them to their death, and soon that craving became an incessant need. Such a need, that when she was deprived of a hunt for too long her bones ached.

Just like Kate's bones ached when she was deprived of a hunt, Chris' bones ached when he knew something was wrong. It was that daunting feeling that made Chris check in on Kate that night, and it was an even worse daunting feeling when he saw no one was home. He ran downstairs, nearly breaking the door off its hinges as he checked the cabinets. Kate's guns were gone. Chris' breathing became heavy as he looked around the room for clues of her victim. Anything. That was when he laid eyes on the torn pieces of a picture.

It was a picture of a house in the woods.

Chris' heart sank as he bolted out of the house, heart racing as fast as his motorcycle rode. He made a break for it on foot as soon as he reached the woods looking at any sign of his sister. It was then he saw her cornering what seemed to be two children. She must be mad. She had to be. Children?

"KATE," He yelled.

A gunshot fired, another scream followed.

"CHRIS"

A steady beep from a heart monitor machine woke the young blonde man up from his sedative induced nap. He had attempted to sit up in the hospital bed, but he gave up after a sharp pain shot through his body. He laid back down, still groggy from his sleep. The sedatives apparently were still in effect as his world began slowly fading to black once more. Slowly he fell asleep before he could hear the door of his hospital room open missing the company of Kate.

"The Hales are mine," she whispered as she looked over her brother.