Full Summary:
There is an old legend about soul mates that almost no one remembers. It is said that when a soul mate dies, the ghost of the departed wanders the earth alongside their living mate. Only the one left alive can ever see the spectral visage of the one who passed on, only the one left alive can speak with the one who is gone, can ever feel them again. When Allison Argent dies, she expects to wander the Earth with Scott, supporting her Alpha as a love that transcends life and death and fate. But it's not Scott who sees her at all. Dealing with a suicidal soul mate who felt cheated of a life with her is hard enough, falling in love after death is even harder. Allisaac.
August 29th, 2002
Christopher Argent watched as his daughter ate her popsicle, red syrup dripping down her fingers. Her legs swung back and forth off on the green metal of the park bench, in tandem with each little nibble and bite. She grinned up at him where he stood, her smile wide and open. He loved his little girl so much.
If he had his way, they would run away from this life, buy a house in the woods and never worry about werewolves and hunting and all of the things that threatened to take his life every night.
But he didn't have his way, and he never would. He knew that.
So he would stave off Victoria's (and Kate's and Gerard's) will as long as he could. He would give his little girl as good a childhood as he could, before he would be forced to pull her into the life he could not escape.
He would give her princesses and true love and fairy tales, and he would be strong enough to teach her how to protect herself too.
Allison finished her treat and jumped off the pack bench with that same sweet smile, her dark curls dancing with the movement.
"Daddy, daddy! Can you tell me the story about the ghosts again?" Ally asked, tugging on his hand with sticky red fingers. He walked with her through the park as he told her the story again.
"There's a legend about soul mates. They say that when two people were meant to be together, and one of them died, the one who died would become a wanderer. And they would go around the world as a ghost, but only their soul mate could ever see them."
"If my soulmate dies, I'm going to make him a name tag so everyone can see him."
Chris laughed, and ruffled Ally's hair.
"With lots of glitter?" He asked her.
She laughed, "Duh! Can we get french fries for supper?"
November 2012
Allison Argent is seventeen years old when she dies. She doesn't make it to eighteen by a handful of months. She doesn't make it halfway through her junior year of high school.
She doesn't make it to her first pack Christmas. She doesn't even make it to Thanksgiving.
Allison dies in November, in the arms of the boy she loved so much.
She wakes up a few days later, with the knowledge that she's not actually alive. She's a specter, a spirit, a ghost. She's dead.
Her true love is waiting for her to come to him. It fills her with a burning hope, and she's certain it shines through her brightly.
She said her goodbyes to Scott McCall while slowly dying in his arms, and now she can return and feel him once again.
-x-
Her funeral is a bleak affair. She watches from a distance. Seeing her now would only freak him out. She knows from years of public school that the stories about the soul mate wanderers aren't widely known. It's a thing of lore and mostly forgotten legend. He needs time before she springs back into his life.
-x-
Allison watches as her father places a rose on her casket, his face impassive as he does it. Ever the hunter.
But the shaking in his hands give him away.
I never wanted this for you, Allison. I wanted fairy tales to be tales, not truths.
She remembers him whispering the words into her hair, placing a gentle kiss on the top of her head and holding her tight.
She remembers him hiding that part of himself away once her shaking stopped.
Her father will never hold her in his arms again, never kiss her hair and tell her he loves her.
She knows he'll say it when he's alone, holed up somewhere far removed from everything else. "I love you so much, baby girl. I'm so sorry I got you killed."
Allison wants him to kiss her forehead one last time... Allison wants him to walk her down the aisle and give her away... Allison wants to be alive, and for her father's sake isn't the only reason.
But it's a reason all the same.
-x-
Lydia is crying when she walks up to her casket. Not loud, ugly sobs. But a steady silent stream of crying that makes Allison want to throw things, to wreck havoc on the world. The crying of someone who has given up all pretenses that everything is okay.
Lydia was her sister just as much as her father was her father. Blood didn't matter there. Lydia had told her once that she was the first real friend she'd ever had, and they'd declared themselves sisters over ice cream and pizza and that was that.
But Allison isn't alive anymore.
Allison didn't listen to Lydia and she died for it.
She knows how Lydia thinks. She knows there is a part of her that will be thinking, "I should have tried harder. It's my fault she's dead."
And Allison hates that. She wants to curl up in Lydia's bed with a bottle of wine pilfered from her mom's collection and read guilty pleasure smut out loud to each other until they're giggling messes. She wants to fall asleep with her advanced anatomy textbook open with Lydia's legs tangled in hers as they listen to Pandora and talk about boys.
She doesn't want Lydia to lose her sister, her best friend, her AllyA.
But she already has and Allison can't change that.
-x-
Scott looks so broken as he walks to place his flower.
He looks like he will fall to pieces if the wind blows wrong, like he'll crash and burn if he has to do this, to say goodbye.
She almost pitches forward to go to him, but she doesn't want him (or anyone else) to think that he's lost it in his grief.
She wants to hug him, to pepper his face in little kisses until he is no longer sad.
She wants to go on another date with him, and a proper one. She wants to be wearing the dress her father buried her in for a happy occasion, and make a memory that she'll cherish forever.
She wants to marry Scott McCall under a full moon in the summer. She wants to make new memories with him to replace the dark ones.
She knows she can't.
But she can be there for him, after death. She can love him forever, support him eternally, and be there always.
She just has to be patient.
-x-
Isaac's eyes are rimmed with red and smudged with purple. It's the kind of look that only comes from crying and not sleeping.
She hadn't realised he cared that much about her. That he liked her that much, that her death would hurt him so much.
She knew he cared about her, and she cared about him too. But it had always been more about the physical pull between them with her.
She wished she could have given him a goodbye.
But she can't.
-x-
When she sees Stiles, she knows it's him and not the thing in his skin that had been responsible for her death.
She feels no ill will toward him.
But she can feel the guilt coming off of him just by looking at him.
He hesitates to join the line, an unfathomable look in his eyes. Derek Hale comes up behind him slowly, placing a hand on his shoulder and waiting for Stiles to look at him before whispering something in his ear.
And then Stiles steps out of his grip and towards the casket. Allison can almost hear his words on the breeze. I'm so sorry, Allison.
When Stiles turns away from her casket, he looks at Scott, wanting to go to him, to comfort him. She can read it in Stiles' face in a way she expected to be able to. But Scott is staring past Stiles. He's staring at the framed picture resting on her casket, the picture Lydia had taken of her in her favorite hat, an old wool cap she'd had for ages. She was laughing in the picture.
It's Allison's favorite picture of herself.
And then Stiles falters. He doesn't return to his seat by Scott, but nods for Scott's mother to take it.
He sits in the back row of chairs, two seats behind Scott, instead.
-x-
Allison watches Derek Hale placing a rose so carefully on her casket. It's reverent and full of grace and it hurts.
It's a sign of respect, and she feels it in her bones. (Though that's all figurative, as she no longer has any.)
And then Derek and Stiles share a look that she doesn't understand. Derek nods at him as he walks away from her casket. He says something to her father, who looks at him with respect that she doesn't expect.
And then Derek sits next to Stiles.
-x-
They bury her in a plot next to her mother's. It's a plot that had been purchased for her father to be buried in one day.
They bury her in the afternoon during an exceptionally hot November day. She doesn't know the date, and she doesn't think it matters.
Her father and Scott will probably never forget it.
(Neither will Stiles, she suspects.)
She watches Isaac leave with her father's hand on his shoulder and wonders how much they've bonded since her death.
She watches Scott leave with his mother after talking briefly to Stiles and Derek. She watches the sheriff leave in his cruiser, probably back to defending Beacon Hills from the darkness of the human kind.
And she watches Derek slip his suit jacket over Stiles' shoulders and prod him into his car.
Lydia leaves last. She leaves after she places a bouquet of bright yellow buttercups on the newly packed earth of her grave.
-x-
When they're all gone, Allison brushes her fingers against the soft petals of the flowers and wishes she could feel them.
One week more, and she will go see Scott and tell him a ghost story and kiss his lips and be his girl again, after death.
In the mean time, she's going to grieve for herself.
Author's note:
Updates may be slow. I have a lot of fics to work on. This is being written for haleofabootie over on tumblr and has been crossposted on Archive of Our Own.